According to the FBI, "sovereign citizens" are a loose network of individuals living in the United States who believe that federal, state, and local governments operate illegally and thus, whose laws do not apply to them. In April of this year, our partners at Jefferson County 9-1-1 received a call from a person declaring himself a sovereign citizen.
They'd dealt with the caller multiple times prior but this call quickly escalated to threats. Here's the story of heroic actions by a telecommunicator who used Prepared Live to stop the domestic terrorist threat before it could even occur, as told by Jeff Dempsey, Logistics Manager of Jefferson County:
"On 4/2/23 a male called into 9-1-1, claiming to be a sovereign citizen. I knew he had made threats in the past and, on this day, he threatened the call taker, the business he was at, and a church.
While waiting on the MACC center to ping the phones location, [Telecommunicator] Chasity decided to activate Prepared Live. Surprisingly enough, the caller not only accepted and went live, he also accepted the location request. Having this information, Chasity was able to obtain a location, flip the camera to see his face, and use the video to narrate surroundings to determine his exact location. In the video, his steering wheel came into view with the car's emblem in the middle, so we knew the make of the car we were looking for.
All of this information was collected via Prepared Live and dispatchers were able to direct deputies directly to him, where he was taken into custody. He was transported to jail and charged with making terroristic threats and no bond. Without Prepared Live and Chastity’s quick thinking, he may have acted on his threats. I just wanted to say thank you for providing us with great tools to do our job and brag on Chastity; her quick thinking may have prevented a tragedy
Amazing work by Chasity to ensure the safety of her community and the prompt arrest of the "sovereign citizen"!