The cop, the sovereign citizen and the arrest that ruined a life

Sergeant Aston left his office to check on his team operating a checkpoint at Coldstream. The roads were near deserted, but he still managed to check about six cars without incident.

That is, until 9.45pm when he stopped at the lights at the Dorset Road-Mountain Highway intersection with a black Renault hatch in the inside lane.

“I wound down my passenger window and indicated to the driver to do the same,” Aston told me. The driver obeyed and Aston asked him, “Where are you off to?”

He responded that he was going to work at a factory, but he was with his girlfriend, which was reason for the cop to order him to pull over to check his work permit.

The driver agreed, but when the lights changed he drove off. At first, it wasn’t dramatic, with a slow speed chase, at around the 70km/h speed limit, with the police car getting in front and the suspect changing lanes as Aston tried to slow the Renault.

Finally, the suspect stopped but sat behind the wheel. Aston was in front of the Renault and vulnerable. “He had a look of desperation on his face to evade me and placed me in a position I hoped to never be in. He was revving the motor, and so I drew my firearm and told him to get out of the car.”

The driver, a “sovereign citizen” we will call Sam, refused, repeatedly saying, “You have no authority.”

Aston grabbed Sam to rip him from the car. They wrestled with the suspect finally agreeing to comply. But he didn’t, throwing the car into gear. Aston called for backup and says when he grabbed his radio, he accidentally turned off his body-worn camera.

Half in and half out of the moving car, he thought he could be smashed by looming street signs. “I tried to scramble into the car. I couldn’t, due to the forward movement. My feet were not able to get any grip.”

Aston punched the driver in the face and after the car stopped, he sprayed the offender with pepper spray.

Backup from the Boronia divisional van and an off-duty policeman who saw the incident managed to handcuff the struggling man. The female passenger had slipped away and couldn’t be found.

“I stood up, completely spent, utterly out of breath but relieved that I had survived the scariest and most dangerous arrest of my career. Sometime during the struggle with him, I had cut open the top of my thumb but did not feel it. There was blood all over my hand, but it was numb, I was numb.”

Taken to the Knox police station, Sam, 32, claimed he was not driving the car and police did not have the authority to stop him, demanding to see a legal proclamation signed by the Queen.

Turns out he had done the same in 2018 when he was found asleep in his car in Lygon Street and refused to get out of the vehicle when police arrived.

After the Aston incident he was charged with unlicensed driving, failure to stop and endangering an emergency service worker – the latter offence attracting a maximum 20-year sentence.

Then someone (probably the female passenger) made a complaint against Aston, who was interviewed by a senior officer. This is not unusual as most cops receive complaints during their career.

‘I was starting to hate everything about the job that I once loved.’

Michael Aston

For Aston, the incident was a tipping point. The outgoing cop started to withdraw. “On my supervision shifts I stopped going on patrol. I dreaded the phone ringing in the office. I stopped doing my job. I would drive to work and halfway there I would stop, sit in my car, not wanting to go to the police station.

“If I did go, I would sit in the office. I got behind on my paperwork. I was starting to hate everything about the job that I once loved.

“About 12 months later I decided I would not be able to work as a police officer any more.” At that point he went on sick leave. It was about to get worse – 364 days after the incident, one day before the legal deadline – he was charged with assault-related offences from the incident.

Deanna says she watched the husband she knew disappear.

“Over the following days and months, he would leave for work, and 20 minutes later he would return home,” she said.

“At night whilst he was sleeping he would yell out ‘pull over’ and thrash around in the bed. There were times when he would punch me in the back of the head when he was asleep whilst yelling out, ‘Let go of me’. He would get to the point where he would wake up vomiting in the middle of the night.”

There were three issues of Aston’s actions that were highlighted. The way he pulled over the suspect, drawing his firearm and the fact his camera was turned off.

“They thought I did it deliberately to give him a quilting,” he says. But the cameras of the two police officers from the van were on and did not record any unnecessary violence.

Sam the suspect (and now the star witness against Aston) claimed he had suffered a chipped tooth and a broken nose in the assault. But the doctor reported the man refused to have his nose X-rayed and there was plaque on the damaged tooth indicating it was an old injury.

The case would come down to the word of the motorist (the female passenger refused to testify) and this is where the prosecution failed miserably.

He claimed to have become unconscious during the assault, but the body-worn cameras of the backup police showed him yelling abuse, his allegations of injuries could not be verified, and he provided pictures of his injuries, but that did not match the metadata.

Nine times the case went to court to be adjourned with one magistrate telling the prosecution, “If that’s all you’ve got it will fail.”

Instead of withdrawing the charges the prosecution doubled down, adding the offence of common law assault.

They did withdraw the main charges against the motorist – endangering an emergency service worker – because Aston was the main witness.

The case was heard over five days in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. When the star witness testified, he was asked about his Facebook post on a 7News story showing a police officer thrown in the air when a driver refused to stop.

His comment? “Love this. Eat shit DOG COP, that’s what ya get when you f..k with someone for no reason.”

Deanna said: “You could feel the air seep out of the room. It was the mic drop moment.”

In another post, Sam wrote: “WE NEED TO RISE UP. WE NEED TO FIGHT THE POLICE. WE NEED TO FIGHT KICK THE GOVERNMENT OUT AND THROW THEM IN JAIL WE SHOULD HAVE THE ARMY TO HELP US THE PEOPLE AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK, BUT THEY COULD BE CORRUPTED FROM WITH IN ALREADY.”

Aston gave evidence, but the magistrate had already decided to throw the case out. He was acquitted on July 29.

“This has enveloped my life for four years. I have thought about it every single day. I was never an emotional man, but I cried when I was acquitted,” he said.

“It has ruined me. I have become a hermit and can’t go anywhere without Deanna. It has destroyed us.”

He has been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, PTSD and for the cop who loved the open road, agoraphobia.

Deanna now suffers with depression and no longer works as a tutor.

They have sold their investment property and live quietly on his police disability pension.

And we call it the justice system.

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John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.