Police in Australia are searching for a “very dangerous” man suspected of killing two Victoria police officers and injuring another.
Dezi Freeman, a 56-year-old with a history of offenses, remains at large after the shooting in Porepunkah, a town of just over 1,000 people located 320km northeast of Melbourne.
Police say the suspect describes himself as a “sovereign citizen”, a member of a movement known for promoting conspiracy theories and hostility towards law enforcement.
Mr Freeman reportedly opened fire when 10 armed police officers tried to execute a search warrant at his property in Porepunkah on Tuesday morning.
The shooting killed a 59-year-old detective and a 35-year-old senior constable and wounded another officer.
The police officers “were met by the offender and they were murdered in cold blood,” Victoria police chief Mike Bush said.
He added the suspect, who was still armed, fled on foot into surrounding bushland where a sweeping search for him extended through wet and cold conditions into Tuesday night.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said after the shooting that the threat of “sovereign citizens” and extremist ideologies must be taken seriously.
Mr Freeman reportedly espoused “sovereign citizen” beliefs. The sovereign citizen movement consists of individuals who share the belief that the law doesn’t apply to them.
The movement originated in the US and, in recent years, found adherents in Australia and New Zealand. “Sovereign citizens” like Mr Freeman believe that they are separate, or sovereign, from the nations they live in.
Sovereign citizens use fringe legal theories to reject government authority. In the past, some have insisted they could disregard motor vehicle rules because they were “travellers”, not “drivers”, and have refused to pay taxes.
Mr Freeman has a history of trouble with authorities, calling police “terrorist thugs”, according to court documents, and unsuccessfully attempting to arrest a magistrate and police officers while representing himself in a hearing.
In a 2024 case where Mr Freeman tried to challenge a lengthy suspension of his driver’s license, a Victoria Supreme Court judge noted that he had “a history of unpleasant encounters with police officers” whom he referred to in his submissions as “Nazis” and “terrorist thugs”.
While it is not known how many sovereign citizens there are in Australia, researchers believe that their numbers swelled during the Covid pandemic and the anti-vaccine protest in 2022 called the Convoy to Canberra.
