Michael Aston loved being a cop, or more specifically, a road policing officer. He said it was the best job in the world, until it wasn't. Aston is no longer a cop, with his career and mental health disappearing into the quicksand of the legal system where no one is accountable.

It was 2020, and the start of the dark days of COVID, when Aston was policing then-premier Daniel Andrews' lockdown laws that prevented Victorians from travelling outside a five-kilometre radius. 

On a road outside of Coldstream, north of Melbourne, Aston tried to pull over a driver to check his work permit – and encountered a sovereign citizen.

This was years before the name Desmond 'Dezi' Freeman ripped into the public's consciousness for shooting three police officers, two fatally, in the Victorian High Country.

But back in 2020, Aston's run-in with a sovereign citizen changed his life.

Aston and his wife, Deanna, open up to John Silvester in today's special episode of Naked City.

Background reading

• John Silvester's full story on Michael Aston.
• All of Sly's columns, and stories.