Face-Off Prompts Talks With Posse County Meeting Discusses Anti-Government Group

A recent face-off between anti-government sympathizers and sheriff’s officers prompted Garfield County officials to call a meeting with the citizens posse Monday night.

Four people blocked Sheriff Charles Phipps and his undersheriff from repossessing a tractor and combine from a farm north of town on April 6, County Attorney Nick Murnion said Tuesday.

He said the four who blocked the sheriff did not brandish any weapons, but one wore a pistol on his hip.

“The community, when they heard about it, were outraged,” Murnion said. “The sheriff had a writ of execution signed by the judge.”

The machines were believed to have been owned by William L. Stanton, a freeman leader who is serving 10 years in prison, and one of the four who stopped Phipps was Stanton’s son, Ebert Stanton, Murnion said.

The freemen movement consists of anti-government protesters who say they are subject only to “common law,” not to the Constitution or other civil laws.

The machines were on a neighbor’s farm, and Phipps and the undersheriff were driving them away on a county road when they were flagged down by a man who claimed he, not Stanton, owned the tractor, Murnion said. Then three other men arrived.

“The sheriff opted to leave the machinery there and sort it out later, and that’s what we were doing” Monday night, Murnion said.

Murnion declined to label the four as freemen, but said they were at least freemen sympathizers.

About 50 of the posse’s 84 members attended the two-hour meeting Monday night, Murnion said.

“We wanted input from the posse as to how far they would like us to proceed in certain areas, and (it was) a general information-type meeting,” he said.