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Acceptance Once I’d gone public about being a
Wiccan cop, I eventually started finding other Wiccan police officers. The first was Liz Mahaffey of the Hall
County Shefiff’s Department in Gainsville, Georgia. We’d both been listed in a booklet
published by Otter G’Zell of the Church of All Worlds: Witchcraft,
Satanism, and Ritual Crime: Who’s Who and What’s What.
Both of us had been listed as ‘occult expert’ resources and law
enforcement officers. I contacted Liz
and we teamed up to work together in the Wiccan Information Network. Liz had “come out” about the same time
that I did. She writes: I "came out" at the Sheriff's department when
all that fallderah and hullabaloo was going on with the Satanic Stuff and
after I attended a seminar put on by [police officer turned “occult expert”]
Dale Griffiths - I spoke with the instructor at the Forsyth, Georgia academy
(State academy) who lectures on this stuff and told him I was Wiccan and he
was very open about discussing Wiccan beliefs. I copied him numerous
articles, material, etc. on Wiccan and Pagan beliefs. I also lectured at the
Fulton County Police Academy.” The
next Pagan cop that I encountered was Sean Watson (a pseudonym – he isn’t
public about his beliefs). Sean was a
Florida cop. Sean wrote the foreword
to my Law Enforcement Guide to Wicca.
I have been corresponding with Liz and Sean for years now, but due to
us living so many miles away from one another, to this day we have never met
face to face. It was
in May of 1992 that I finally found myself face to face with another Wiccan
police officer. This was at the
Heartland Festival in Leavenworth, Kansas.
The theme of this festival was the same as that of many other Pagan
festivals across North America that year:
A commemoration of the Salem Witch trials 300 years earlier. Heartland had just relocated to this lake
side site in Kansas. The organizers
had invited me to meet with representatives of the Leavenworth PD and Kansas
Bureau of Investigation. I conducted a
half hour introductory lecture on Wicca for these representatives, followed
by a question period. About half way
through this question period I noted that one of the attending police
officers was adding informed comments to my answers. At first I thought that this was just a
well read cop, but I soon realized that this was not the situation. The questions ended, the officers went out
to look around the site. I walked up
to this knowledgeable officer and said: “How
long have you been public about your Wiccan beliefs?” The
officer smiled, looked at his watch and replied: “About 20 minutes.” That
was how I met the third officer to become public about his Wiccan beliefs:
Ron Quirk, an instructor at the Kansas State Police Academy. By
1993 I was beginning to notice a change.
All of the publicity and public speaking was beginning to make a
difference. It was becoming more
common for people to approach me and ask me to describe my Wiccan
beliefs. I noticed a difference in my
dealings with the public as well.
People began treating me less as a curiosity or an anomaly and more as
a source of information. In April of
1993, my wife Phoenix and I were invited to speak to a World Religion Class
at Burnaby North High School. This was
the first of several invitations to speak at this school. It was fascinating to interact with young
students in this environment. The
following year I presented lectures on urban legends involving Witchcraft and
Satanism at the University of Victoria and for professor Michael Kenny’s
anthropology class at Simon Fraser University. I repeated this presentation at the
Theology Department of the University of British Columbia in March of 1995. In May of 1996 I joined “Car 86,”
a collaborative team made up of police officers from the Vancouver PD and
social workers from the Ministry for Children and Family Development. I knew that I was going to like working
with the social workers at the Ministry After Hours Office when I saw the
emergency cabinet on the wall by the receptionist's desk. It is a small,
narrow wooden cabinet with a glass door which one is to break "in case
of emergency." Inside is a "magic wand" consisting of a
cardboard star painted gold on the end of what appears to be an old metal
umbrella shaft. The glass door is inscribed with the label: “Wand of Eternal
Happiness.” In
1997 I wrote the third edition of the Law Enforcement Guide to Wicca, expanding it from 44 pages to
129. In March of 2000 my book Wiccan Warrior was released. I sent copies of both of these books to the
Vancouver PD Community Relations Section. One of the things that amazed me
about this release was the number of police officers within my department
that went out and bought it. It wasn’t
that these officers had decided to become Wiccans. Most of them told me that they were curious
and simply wanted to support a fellow officer. I was touched. On 5
October 2000 I presented a public lecture on Wicca as part of the Vancouver
Public Library’s “Paths To Truth” lecture series. This event gave me an interesting example
of how the situation has changed for the Wiccan community, at least in my
area. In the past Christian
evangelical hecklers have occasionally shown up at public gatherings or
called in to radio talk shows to heckle me.
At this Vancouver Public Library event only one heckler made himself
known: A Satanist who tried to convince me that what he did was really Witchcraft. One other member of the audience stood out. This person was asking |
Acceptance
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Email:
webmaster@officersofavalon.com |
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To contact us: |
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“How
long have you been public about your Wiccan beliefs?” The officer smiled, looked at his watch and replied:
“About 20 minutes.” |
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Volume 2 no. 4 Litha, Midsummer 2007 |
