Sovereign Citizen Fills Truck Bed With 'Tyranny Trees,' Cops Arrest Him For Allegedly Cutting Down Flock Cameras

The country's surprisingly rapid descent into a mass-surveillance state has created some strange bedfellows. You might find yourself standing alongside someone who might have liked to blow up a federal building in the 1990s. Sheriff's deputies in Albuquerque, New Mexico, arrested a man on Wednesday after he showed up at their headquarters with a pickup truck filled to the brim with cut-down Flock cameras. If it weren't for the sovereign citizen flag on his hitch-mounted post, I'd be wholeheartedly rooting for this guy.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office announced last week that it was canceling its contracts with Flock. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Sheriff John Allen cited privacy concerns regarding the tech company's use of data. He also noted that Flock would take weeks or months to inform him when a camera was destroyed or dismantled. The automated license plate readers couldn't come down fast enough for Jevon Martinez. The 44-year-old hopped into his Ford dually and took matters into his own hands. When Martinez dropped off his harvest of steel and silicon, he was arrested. This brazen vigilante was already facing nine felonies, including larceny, criminal damage to property, and tampering with evidence.

Yes, this isn't Martinez's first act of direct action against Flock ALPRs. KOB reported that he was arrested in May for damaging plate readers in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. It was an open-and-shut case for law enforcement because he posted videos of himself committing the crimes on a now-deleted Instagram account. In one video, the 44-year-old stated, "Just for the record, I am not stealing these. I am not destroying them. I am simply returning them to the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department." He would also refer to the pole-mounted cameras as "tyranny trees," which isn't an entirely inaccurate description.

Martinez used the attention he's garnered on social media to raise nearly $20,000 for his cause on GoFundMe. Before you rush to throw money at him, you should be aware that his cause isn't solely anti-surveillance. He has often promoted the "Republic of New Mexico" movement. Unlike California or Texas, New Mexico was never an independent republic before being admitted to the Union. It's just boilerplate rhetoric used by sovereign citizens to claim the federal government somehow isn't real. Martinez even put up sovereign citizen flags on the bare posts after taking down the Flock cameras.

The real push to get rid of automated license plate readers in the Albuquerque area is far from over. The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office has three separate contracts with Flock for five ALPR cameras, 16 speed cameras, and an unspecified number of gunshot detection devices. While all three agreements will be terminated, Sheriff Allen's data privacy concerns were solely with Flock as a business and the agency is looking for a new camera partner. The BCSO isn't even going to take down Flock's speed cameras, promising that they will be used solely as speed cameras.

In response to public concerns, New Mexico's government has taken steps to prevent the unrestricted use of Flock data. The Driver Privacy and Safety Act became law earlier this year after it was revealed that out-of-state law enforcement agencies were repeatedly accessing information collected by Flock ALPRs in New Mexico. While Flock instituted basic safeguards to prevent abuse and save face, the ACLU found evidence that they can be easily circumvented. One police department in Oregon successively entered "hehehe" as its reason for accessing the database 20 times over a single month. A nationwide mass surveillance system is awful enough. The lack of thorough checks or oversight is a travesty for our rights. A warrant should be the bare minimum to know where my car is at any given moment.