A nutter didn’t want to pay municipal property tax (insert “common law” woo), so he was petitioned into bankruptcy by the municipality. He organized a posse (insert “constitution” woo), which then tried to, well, it’s hard to describe, but included one of them standing on a table in court blaring out woo through a megaphone, and later outside another of them wooing on about “contract”. You just have to watch it and try not to laugh your guts out.
Something worth noting, however, is the great restraint on the part of the police, who protected the judge, arrested the worst of the clowns, and de-escalated the situation, all without resorting to force. That impressed me, for quite honestly I don’t think I would have been so responsible.
These days, a lot of protests seem to be little more than malcontents confronting police, and the police taking a hard line, which results in violence, and more importantly, results in giving the malcontents a cause. In the matter at hand, the way the police distributed themselves throughout the crowd and took their time to calm the situation worked nicely.
Dopers are the best! This thread was a fun read for sure! You guys kill me, that’s why I didn’t mind paying so much money to join! Wait a minute… that was something else. This is free.
Yes, however, to be polite and to avoid allegations of being intemperate, they avoid profanity and instead use terms such as “frivolous and vexatious.”
That would be funny if it weren’t so damn scary. This group decided that the judge in this case was acting in violation of the Magna Carta, that he was disallowing their claims and documents, and so they staged a rally at the court with several hundred people. They stacked the courtroom. Then the lawyer for the defendant called upon the Judge to produce his “oath of office”. I’m not sure how a judge produces an oath. Is there a signed document, or is he supposed to stand up and recite it again in the room? Anyway, the judge refused to comply with the nutter request, so the nutter lawyer made the claim that he was in violation of the Magna Carta, which requires magistrates to produce their oath upon request (?), so he called for the people to arrest the judge. A group from the crowd storm the front of the courtroom. Several bailiffs and court officers try to intervene but they are outnumbered and overwhelmed. The crowd surrounds the judge and declare him arrested.
Apparently then what happens is the police call backup and contain the courtroom. The nutters in the crowd outside are declaring victory, and storm the courthouse, so the cops close down the courtroom. After much confusion, noise, and a very tense situation that could easily have triggered a riot, the nutters declare the “legal basis” for their proceedings (that Roger guy), and then turn the “arrested” judge over to the constables. The constables, of course, immediately release the judge and arrest a few of the more obstinate and physical of the nutters. There are claims of “assault” yelled out by the crowd against the cops, but all I see are shoving people refusing to obey the constables instructing them to clear out and calm down, and obstructing efforts to take people into custody.
Anyway, this Roger guy and the lawyer guy get some real media attention out in the streets, and propound away about their supposed legal basis for action and how the judge is corrupt and the constables don’t know the law and thus arrested the wrong people (the citizens not the judge) and that they plan to proceed by calling for the arrrest of the chief constable.
I watched a snippet of the pt 2 video, the leader of the party giving some talk a couple weeks later, and starting his spin again. He starts describing that the courts are having precoordination meetings before court actions and preparing for how to act. And he says the courts are scared. His explanation for why is that they’ve cought the courts doing illegal things, not acting within common law and subverting the Magna Carta and all that nonsense. Real explanation for why they are scared - they’re afraid the next step in these protests and arrests is to be unhappy that the constables aren’t cooperating with their “arrests” and that violence will ensue.
Try as I might I did not hear any actual descriptions of the supposed illegal acts, other than the refusal to produce an oath on request. There was a lot of accusations of being corrupt, of denying documents and using falsified documents, but we can’t evaluate those claims from a 10 minute video interview. Certainly not without the docs or the judge’s explanation.
Well, they were greatly outnumbered at the outset, and even later they still were outnumbered. Plus, this group of protestors did resort to some shoving and blockading, but were largely non-violent and eventually “handed over the arrested judge” to the constables, who were supposed to take their word that their actions were legal and promptly march the judge down to the cells, or something, rather than look puzzled at each other, then set the judge free and start handcuffing the folks who disrupted court and stormed the bench. And assaulted a cop. Things could go much differently very quickly, especially if these protestors felt they needed to enact their own court or something. Or if they had guns, which would be much more likely in the US.
Yeh, I started reading the article because it said it was about self-reps (I am dealing with one today, and just shaking my head), so I was surprised to see the article take a 90 degree turn and go on about OPCAs, given that they are in no way representative of typical self-reps.
That was my feeling, too. I’ve dealt with self-reps before, and while they make me shake my head also, none have been OPCAs.
It’s a good article, but perhaps it could have been two articles: one dealing with typical self-reps; the other dealing with self- or agent-represented OPCAs.
The original guy from this thread was on ABC News yesterday. Apparently in addition to the behavior that’s already been discussed, he has firearms and practices open carry whenever he leaves the house. He’s probably going to kill somebody or get shot by the police sooner or later. He apparently has a substantial record (he’s only something like 21) and is continually getting in trouble.
One of the funnier things he said was that he plans on suing the government. In what court?
With these guys? Quite possibly their own made-up court, after which they will inevitably be caught by surprise when the real courts don’t take their “ruling” seriously.
Spent a pleasant hour today chatting with a freemen-on-the-land fellow while making notarial copies of some ID for him. Being the ever curious type, I asked him what he was up to, and he started in on how Canadian birth certificates are kept in England, that the Queen owns us, something about the use of capitals on a birth certificate, the nefarious reasons behind the underlying of text on a birth certificate, the importance of distinguishing between signing as John of the family of Doe rather than as John Doe, and something rather muddled about whether or not a birth certificate relates to our body or our soul. Somehow or other, he intended to get off of a marijuana charge because of all this.
Ironically, there actually was an error on his birth certificate, but that didn’t bother him at all.
What surprised me is that speaking with him was enjoyable, and he was a nice person – off the wall ignorant of how government and law works, and utterly lacking in reasoning ability, but a nice person none the less.
