15 years later, a film retells the West Memphis police murders — and why they still matter

“I don’t want to have to kill anybody, but if they keep messing with me, that’s what it’s going to have to come out. That’s what it’s going to come down to, is I’m going to have to kill. And if I have to kill one, then I’m not going to be able to stop, I just know it.”-- Jerry Kane, 2009

“Sovereign” is a new indie film based on the shocking 2010 murder of two West Memphis, Arkansas police officers by political extremists. It’s not a documentary or even a crime thriller, but an unexpected allegory about fathers and sons, with a tight run time of only 100 minutes, and a quiet, deliberate atmosphere that never devolves into melodrama or sensationalism. It’s worth watching (and most cops can’t resist a true-crime story, even if it’s just to shred the movie version), as long as you remember the real lives that were shattered by an angry man and a 16-year-old boy.

A real tragedy behind the fiction

“Sovereign” feels timely, even though it’s about an event 15 years in the past. (And in fact, two Australian officers were killed and another wounded in a shootout with a sovereign for the second time in three years, while I was finishing this article.) Before its release, I was apprehensive about the conspiracy-driven murderers seeming too sympathetic. I think the director stopped just short of that line, but I am very disappointed that the victims’ families appeared to have no input into a production about such a profoundly personal tragedy. Interviews with Nick Offerman about his role as lead antagonist were all over the internet during advance publicity without mention of the officers or their survivors.

Who were Jerry and Joe Kane?

Offerman plays Jerry Kane (the first father introduced in the story), a widower who travels the country teaching desperate people sketchy ways to evade taxes and evictions. Offerman is the star power for this film and he knows it; his portrayal of Kane is a true-believer version of the intensity he brought to the prepper in “The Last of Us.”

Jerry Kane is a drama queen given to late-night podcast rants and catastrophizing routine obstacles like bills and traffic stops, who resents perceived government interference in his life. He isolates his teenage son, Joe, homeschooling him and leaving him alone for days while driving from seminar to seminar. When he starts taking Joe along as a teacher’s aide, the first stop is a thrift store to buy a white suit to match his own; they already wear matching flat-top haircuts. In between handing out “‘educational” material for his dad and trips to the shooting range where he’s admonished to aim for heads because “they wear bulletproof vests,” Joe is lectured nonstop on alternate-reality history, civics and conspiracy.

What the film gets right about police work — and what it misses

Father number two is Chief John Bouchart, modeled loosely on real-life West Memphis Police Department Chief Bob Paudert, and played by Dennis Quaid. Chief Bouchart is an old-school, stoic boomer, the kind of family man who will pick his police officer son up on the way to work, and also scold the younger officer for cuddling his baby boy when he cries in the same scene. Quaid’s police chief is stuffy and conventional; he teaches toughness as a kindness. Empathy and hugs make people — even babies — spoiled and soft in his world; love for family is demonstrated by duty and integrity. The younger Bouchart’s character is never developed, except for his unapologetic determination to be responsive and tender with his own infant son.

Many of the details in “Sovereign” are fictionalized, but the crime and its aftermath is very real. The movie ends shortly after the pivotal standoff, but Chief Paudert spent years after the murders managing grief by training other officers to counter the threats posed by sovereign citizens. Let’s look at some of the other differences between the film and real life.

What’s real and what’s not in “Sovereign”

The eviction storyline

Although Jerry Kane had a past eviction, he wasn’t being evicted in 2010. Evictions and tax disputes are common triggers for sovereign citizens who engage in violence, so it was a writer’s convenience to roll those experiences into a neat package for the film, giving viewers an easily accessible motive. Also, Kane was briefly jailed before the shootout, but in New Mexico, not Arkansas; neither he nor his son had direct contact with West Memphis police before the final traffic stop and standoff. He did have a long record of friction with law enforcement in general, and the boy really was isolated from any influence besides his father’s.

The officers’ experience

Unlike his movie counterpart, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, the police chief’s son who was killed in the West Memphis shooting, was no rookie. Nor was Officer Bill Evans, who died alongside him. Brandon had seven years of experience and was the day’s shift sergeant. Chief Paudert described Evans, a nine-year veteran, as “an outstanding SWAT team member; he probably had more training in high-risk situations than anyone on the force”. Evans and Sgt. Paudert stopped the Kanes because they were working drug interdictions as part of an interstate team, and the van had irregular license plates. In real life, as in the film, both officers were unfamiliar with sovereign citizens (or American State Nationals as they are beginning to call themselves now).

Photos/ODMP

The chief’s heartbreaking response

Tragically, in both real life and the movie, Chief Paudert and his wife responded to the shooting scene where their son died when they heard the officer-down call on the radio. Rather than heading out on vacation, the Pauderts were driving to a lakehouse in Missouri where she would recover from recent open-heart surgery.

The real hero behind the wheel

A large pickup truck rams the Kanes’ van in the movie version of the final standoff without elaboration or identifying the driver. In real life, the truck was driven by Arkansas game warden (now Monroe County Sheriff) Michael Neal. He responded to help with the manhunt and arrived at a raging gun battle in a WalMart parking lot, where two wounded officers were pinned behind their vehicle. He used his heavy truck as a weapon, drawing fire to himself and ramming the van. Neal was wounded by shrapnel and glass, and was honored with Medals of Valor in Arkansas and Washington DC. His bullet-riddled patrol rig is on display in the National Law Enforcement Museum.

Lessons for officers from the West Memphis tragedy

Ignorance and complacency are the real enemy. Learn from every source you can find about potential threats from domestic extremists. There are videos online about the West Memphis shooting and others like it, there are trainers and researchers to follow on sites like LinkedIn, and you can subscribe to feeds from professional journals to access information from other law enforcement resources.

Chief Paudert’s in-person training has been accessible through the federal State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) program, but funding for that is reportedly uncertain (and not for the first time). I reached out to the Bureau of Justice Assistance for clarification after being assured by several people that SLATT is still a going concern, but have not heard back as of this writing. For now, the site shows no training scheduled after a single virtual day seminar in January 2026.

Sovereigns are notorious for doxxing LEOs and filing liens and false claims against their homes and property. Protect your assets by homesteading or other means; your county offices or a lawyer can advise you. Keep your social media private. There are commercial sources that specialize in protecting officer privacy and helping to remove information from publicly-accessible sources. In some states (California is one), officers can opt to shield voter registration from public searches, and for their vehicle registrations to return to their work address rather than their homes.

Don’t make assumptions about extremist views based on appearance, age, ethnicity or veteran status. Joe Kane was only 16 when he killed the officers in West Memphis, Arkansas. Other offenders have been well into their 70s and beyond. Sovereign and sovereign-adjacent murderers have been white, Black, Alaskan Native, military veterans, rural residents and city dwellers. Not all extremists are sovereign citizens; there’s a lot of cross-pollination between their beliefs and other tax protesters, anti-eviction activists, and racial-supremacy and separatist movements.

Civil and family law, as well as criminal cases, can trigger sovereigns to criminal violence. There have been attacks on courthouses, threats to kidnap or murder prosecutors and judges, and noncustodial-parent kidnappings; everything is on the table, when someone decides they’re exempt from the law. Dr. Christine M. Sarteschi, who teaches on subjects relating to violent extremism at Chatham University, put it this way: “Unfounded, blatantly false beliefs are not merely harmless opinions. They can and did result in the death of several law enforcement officers and a teenage boy. Extremist anti-government movements are always a danger to society, as this movie clearly demonstrates.”

“Sovereign” is positioned as a crime thriller, but for cops, it’s a cautionary tale. When someone hates being told no and hates everything about government even more, a badge isn’t just a symbol of authority. It’s a target.

“Sovereign” is streaming on multiple services including Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

How do you handle encounters with people driven by anti-government beliefs? Share below.

Police1 resources on sovereign citizens

• What is a sovereign citizen? Definitions, license plates, arrests and more
• What cops need to know about sovereign citizen encounters
• 5 common crimes committed by sovereign citizens
• 9 things to prepare for when encountering sovereign citizens
• What are sovereign citizen license plates and how legal are they?
• American State Nationals: The newest group of sovereign citizens