As a police officer, you meet people from many different backgrounds. They are of different races, ethnicities, religions, and political beliefs just to name a few. Most of the time these differences don’t matter to officers during a criminal investigation because they don’t change the fact that a crime or offense was committed. But people, when cited by us or when being arrested, will often try to appeal to what they believe we have in common. One that I hear often is ; “c’mon we are both trying to feed our families.” Early on in my career someone tried to appeal to a secret society. One that I was familiar with, at least by name.
One day I drove to a call to assist. I was still a new officer and my Sergeant. SGT. Jole was impounding a vehicle while teaching me some of the nuisances. At this point in my career, I had not impounded any vehicles yet and was eager to learn. When I showed up, Jole finished the paperwork and I stood by with the driver whose car was being impounded as Ofc. Valley, who also was on site, asked the man for his name, which was Rayray..
While we were waiting for the tow truck to arrive and remove his truck, Rayray walked up to us. He glanced at Valley then looked at me and then said “Excuse me sir? is there a Free Mason lodge here?” I thought about it for a second and said “oh yeah there is one like 5 minutes from here.” Rayray just stood in front of me and didn’t say anything else. A few seconds went by and Rayray asked again “is there a Free Mason lodge here?” I looked at Rayray slightly confused but then I deduced that he probably hadn’t heard me the first time. So I responded in a way to make sure that he heard me this time; “yes sir there is a FreeMason lodge not too far from here.” Rayray looked at me sadly and mumbled “is there a Free Mason lodge here?” Now I had enough and quipped back at him; “Yo, why do you keep asking me this! Yes, there is a lodge not too far from here …yes! Yes! Yes! Now stop asking!” Rayray said “Aight. I’m going to remember this.” Then we walked off.
I looked at Valley bewildered I guess because he immediately said “he was probably a FreeMason”. They have a secret code that they use when they meet other masons members and he was probably trying to figure out if you were one. Valley also said that Rayray was doing some weird hand signals every time he asked me about the FreeMason lodge. “You can ask Jole, he knows more about their customs. He is a Mason.”
I went over to Jole and told him what happened. “Yeah, he tried the same thing on me, but I’m no longer a Mason and I can tell you that he is from a different group of Masons than me,” said Jolel. Jolel then gave me a brief history of the Free Masons.
Since then I have met quite a few Masons while working. I learned from my first interaction to make it clear at the very beginning of any interaction that I am not a part of any secret societies.
Posted here first [https://ourstoriesfrombehindthebadge.wordpress.com/2022/04/02/secret-societies-and-such/]