RIVERDALE, Ga.,None — Clayton County's SWAT team surrounded a Riverdale home Thursday as part of an eviction.
The extra show of force was in response to what Clayton County Sheriff Kem Kimbrough called a veiled threat of violence by so-called sovereign citizens living in the home illegally for months.
The group doesn't believe they have to obey laws or tax codes, and in this case, Kimbrough told Channel 2 Action News that Gideon Israel and his wife, Deborah, had taken over the home and flooded the county with fraudulent paperwork to try to block the eviction.
"(They) have threatened to do violence to anyone who approaches the property claiming that this property is a sovereign nation here in Clayton County," Kimbrough said.
Deborah Israel wasn't home during the eviction, but when asked if he was staying in the home illegally, Gideon Israel told Channel 2's Erin Coleman, "I'm just a person who is a pilgrim and a stranger and I refuse to adhere to unrighteous dictates when the Constitution states that we have rights." He went on to say, "The robber barons, the bankers, who are getting bailed out are not legitimizing our documentation."
As soon as the SWAT team moved out, cleanup crews for the bank moved in. They removed everything from the house, piled it up on the lawn and boarded up the windows and doors.
"I was like, ‘Whoa, who is in the neighborhood … What is going on?'" Brianna McDaniel said. She and other neighbors said the couple had been in the home for more than a year.
"We're definitely seeing an increase in the sovereign citizen movement," Kimbrough added. "But this is the first one where we've had significant amount of threats of violence."
The eviction ended peacefully and deputies didn't find any weapons in the home. They said because the threats of violence weren't directed toward any specific target, they chose not to charge Israel. The FBI was also at the scene to try to learn more about sovereign citizen groups. They took several documents from inside the home about the group's beliefs and how they operate.
WSBTV
