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pointed
questions, most notably the "standard" question I mentioned earlier
in the book: “Isn't your profession in conflict with the Wiccan Rede?”
Afterwards this individual came forward and identified himself as free lance
journalist Brian Salmi. Salmi went on to interview me a week or two later.
Salmi's story, “Blue Magick,” and a color photo of me made the front page of
the Vancouver Courier Newspaper on 25 February. Reaction
to Salmi’s article was for the most part positive. I had inspectors,
sergeants and constables coming forward in the hallways of the police
station, telling me how they had found the article interesting. For the first
time I also got a lot of citizens that I encountered on the streets coming
forward to chat to me about the article and wish me well. The
release of my book Wiccan Warrior led to 16 appearances for me on radio talk shows
and many interviews in various publications in the following 15 months. The fifteenth appearance was on “The World
Today” a local news radio (CKNW) talk show hosted by Philip Till. As luck
would have it, this one hour show was aired on 1 March 2001, exactly a year
after the release of Wiccan Warrior. Until I
appeared on this show, I had no idea how many of the officers in my police
department listened to this program.
For the three weeks following this radio show I had everyone from
deputy chiefs to patrol officers to secretaries coming forward and
complimenting me on how I presented myself and the department. I
remember thinking at the time what a change this was from some of the
reactions to my beliefs a decade and a half earlier. New cops just out of the academy were
noticing my pentagram and commenting “Oh, you’re Wiccan.” 25 years ago I was having people accuse me
of being a Satanist. It is a nice
change: Obviously there is a lot more quality information out there now. It was
in this same month that I joined Officers of Avalon. On 15 December 1999 Corporal Tricia
Mullensky of the University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth) Police Department
had created the Yahoo e-group Officers of Avalon as a “way for Pagan law
enforcement and emergency personnel to talk, discuss, vent or ask questions
to others of like mind. In its infancy
Officers of Avalon was a small e-group where Pagans in the emergency services
could chat." Dozens of Pagan
cops, dispatchers, paramedics and professionals in related professions shared
experiences and supported one another in this chat group. On 12 May, 2002,
Tim Flanagan (Bogota (NJ) Police Reserves) posted the following on the
Officers of Avalon e-group: “The black officers
have their organization, the Irish, the gays, etc. Why not us? They all started with just a few
members. Don’t you think it’s about
time we came out of the closet?… We are good people, and I know that there
are many, many of us across the Us who don’t know who to turn to, … This
small group can be the start of something big for every Wiccan police officer
in the US…” I
started doing educational presentations to even larger law enforcement
groups. In June 2002, I presented
three workshops on “Wiccan and Neo-Pagan Youth” to the National Youth Gang
Conference in Orlando, Florida. 1400
police officers attended this event.
Each of these workshops attracted about 200 police officers and at
each of these workshops I had Wiccan police officers come forward to greet
me. I met some Officers of Avalon
members both on and off the site. The
initial burst of enthusiasm concerning Officers of Avalon expanded the
membership. Suddenly Officers of
Avalon wasn’t simply an obscure e-group any more. This didn’t escape the notice of certain
fundamentalist Christians. On 2 August
2003 the Toronto Sun newspaper published a column by Christian journalist
Michael Coren, “Witch way to prison?”
This 749 word article reflected the alarm on the part of
fundamentalist Christians like Coren to the growth of our Pagan
community. Coren’s article commenced
by reporting that many prisons now have Wiccan chaplains and that “Just like
representatives of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other faiths, Canadian
law and the Canadian Charter will give witches full access to our
incarcerated criminals.” Coren
attempted to make his article humorous.
“One can only hope they won't be teaching them how to make the cell
doors disappear or the warders invisible”, he quipped. Yet the content of the rest of the article
was anything but amusing to us Wiccans.
“Knowing that every good Canadian would delight in this
oh-so-progressive adventure“, Coren said, adding that “the public will have
to pay for [it]” he went to the Pagan Federation Web site to do
research. “What fun it turned out to
be“ Coren jests, “The organization represents witches, druids, goddess
worshippers and various others. As for Satan, visitors to the site are given
an essay praising satanism and providing a link to the Church of Satan Web
site.” Gina
Ellis, President or the Pagan Federation/Federation Paienne Canada responded
to Coren‘s article thus: “We Pagan Federation prison visitors are religious
resource people, not institutional chaplains, and only see inmates who are
registered with their institution as Pagan/Wiccan and who wish to see us. We
teach them our tenets of harming no one and getting in touch with the forces
of nature/the Divine. |
Acceptance, pg 2
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Email:
webmaster@officersofavalon.com |
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To contact us: |
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On 15 December 1999 Corporal Tricia Mullensky of the
University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth) Police Department had created the
Yahoo e-group Officers of Avalon as a “way for Pagan law enforcement and
emergency personnel to talk, discuss, vent or ask questions to others of like
mind. |
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Volume 2 no. 4 Litha, Midsummer 2007 |
