COEUR d'ALENE - Talking through a slide presentation at Jonesy's restaurant, Paul Finman described in detail the beliefs and habits of so-called sovereign citizens.

They generally live in isolation, he said, off in the woods someplace.

They like to be left alone. Some establish illegal businesses - the cultivation of drugs, for instance - as a means of income.

And they're usually armed.

"These people, they mostly come from out of state," he said.

Finman, the technical director at LCF Enterprises in Post Falls, addressed a gathering of North Idaho Pachyderms on Friday morning, including Sen. Jim Hammond, R-Coeur d'Alene, and Rep. Marge Chadderdon, R-Coeur d'Alene.

They listened as Finman discussed North Idaho's sovereign citizens and the dangers they might pose.

"It was extremely interesting," said Jim Connell of Hayden. "I had not heard about Idahoans living that way. The defiance of the law was more than I expected."

For the most part, Finman said, the sovereigns do not pay taxes, and don't carry driver's licenses. Staunchly anti-government, they have often suffered financial setbacks earlier in life, and many have run into trouble with the law.

"They say that they have a Christian element to their ideology," Finman said.

To circumvent financial obligations, sovereign citizens have been known to alter their names, he added. They might insert random punctuation marks or alter the name in other ways.

The change creates a loophole that a citizen can exploit.

"If you owe any money, and it's in your birth certificate name, you don't have to pay it," Finman said.

Sovereign citizens have become violent in recent years. According to CBS News, sovereigns killed two police officers in Arkansas last spring. Another sovereign allegedly killed three men in Texas, and a South Carolina citizen is on death row after murdering two law enforcement officers.

But those are extreme cases. A sovereign citizen's most common weapon is paperwork - strange declarations or multi-page statements, written in confusing legalese.

According to Kootenai County Sheriff's Maj. Dan Mattos, local deputies have occasionally handled correspondence from sovereign citizens. They were trying to get around a certain process, or tell the sheriff's department what they believe it should or should not do.

"It just was so far out in left field, it never went anywhere," Mattos said of the documents. "It's rhetoric to us, because it has no legal merit. I think there's a lot of these people who truly believe in what they're saying. They believe that the way they see it is correct."

Sovereign citizens are not a pressing issue in Kootenai County, Mattos said.

"It's not like we have problem after problem with them. We don't deal with them consistently."

At Friday's Pachyderm meeting, Finman apparently spoke from experience.

He lives about 10 miles south of Priest River, and is currently involved in a lawsuit with the family of Alexander-Duncan: Campbell (the unorthodox punctuation is deliberate).

Campbell is a sovereign citizen, Finman said, who formerly lived in a house on Finman's property. Campbell was not paying rent on the house, Finman said.

Last fall, Campbell agreed to leave the house by a specified date. After the date had passed, Finman tried to demolish the house, he said, but a woman and two children - Campbell's family - were inside.

Finman was charged with three counts of aggravated assault. He pleaded not guilty in May and will stand trial this fall.

The Campbell family eventually vacated the house, Finman said. At one point during their disagreement, Campbell issued Finman a bizarre summons to the "Ultimate Court of Absolute Justice."

The summons included Bible quotations alluding to untimely death, which Finman found troubling.

On June 10 Campbell's vehicle was stopped on Interstate 90, according to court records. It carried a homemade license plate. A loaded 9mm pistol was found inside the vehicle.

Campbell was arrested and charged with carrying a weapon without a license and failure to purchase a driver's license, records said. His bond was posted, and he is scheduled to appear in a pretrial conference hearing on Aug. 2.

Campbell declined to comment to The Press.

"I think it's a little frightening," said Shirlee Wandrock of Coeur d'Alene, who attended the Pachyderm meeting. "I don't know why our state government hasn't gotten involved."