Sometimes you go to training because you are interested in the topic or cynically feel it will help you get a better job or even a promotion. Sometimes, however, it’s get out of town on a paid-for vacation, with a decent expense budget.
As a cop, once you get on a list as a Subject Matter Expert (at governmental expense), it’s impossible to get off that list.
Outside of the workaday encounters with “substance abusers” (AKA Hypes, Crack Monsters, Meth Heads, and just plain old Winos and Drunks), you get to meet a fascinating cross section of humanity by walking a foot beat in a San Francisco ghetto.
Especially if the people are on a “Mission from God” or want to “just talk to you for a moment while Christ explains his message,” and “Donations are always gratefully accepted, yes, we take credit cards.”
Praise be to Allah also!
And then the Cuban Candle Shop opened up on a street corner four blocks from Mission Station.
About a year ago by then a bunch of us blue suiters had taken a class on Cults, and Religious Charity Scams for no other reason than it was being held in Los Vegas; over a 4 day weekend, at a posh hotel named after a pink aquatic bird, that featured a swim-up bar just off of the lobby.
Unfortunately, my street boss, Sgt C, remembered this.
“Hey Dave, you went to that off-kilter religious thing last year, didn’t you?”
(To myself: You know I did, Joe, you signed the travel orders and had to find people to cover my beat on a holiday weekend)
Joe: “There’s a new church type place selling candles and ‘herbs’ down on your beat, and Chaplain Father John wants to know if it’s competition for Saint Catherine’s Parish, that way he can tell the Archbishop about it over golf next Monday.
Like a good boy, I polished up my Saint Michael’s medallion and took a look.
In between oversized Margaritas and the corresponding hangovers, I had sat through the approved classes last year and, as a result, recognized some of the literature in the display case just inside the narrow lobby of the “gift shop”.
Hmm, my street Spanglish was good enough for me to read the headlines on a few pages.
This was a Cubano Santeria venue.
Politely, and while taking off my uniform hat, I walked inside. About 15 people were reading aloud in cadence from thick brown paper scrolls, who took a long look at me and did the” ignore the cop” thing that I had gotten used to by now.
These very polite but rude people were all dressed shoulder to ankle in shining white satin robes and had about 50 tall glass-encased candles aromatically fuming all around the shop.
Large paintings of famous Christian Biblical scenes and individuals were everywhere, as were numerous plaster figurines and statues.
A lot of these people had glowing red hearts and blood from wounds.
So far, I had seen nothing to report to anyone about until the street-side shop door opened, and then two large men came inside.
The chanting stopped, and without adieu, a until now hidden door to the basement was opened so that the first man could carry a large wire cage of white pigeons downstairs, followed by his companion who was leading a full-size female goat on a black leather harness.
Silently, but in an apparent hurry, the ghostly-looking shop occupants now settled into some pre-determined order and silently followed the creatures downstairs. I was left alone, bemused, and staring at an older woman who was putting a “Cerrado” sign in the window. When she pointed at the outside door and gestured for me to leave, it was expected.
My knowledge of the Constitution was better than average, due in no small part to my multiple draft-dodging years at San Jose State, and my curiosity about laws both Federal and otherwise. Freedom of religion was mentioned in many places.
So, as I was about to leave as beckoned, I was startled to hear multiple animal-originating shrieks and human-based screams coming directly from where the livestock had been led.
Now, I’m not a dogcatcher or animal rights advocate (heck, I had just bolted down a very rare Mz Browns triple burger), but something wasn’t right about this audible sound mixture underfoot. Ignoring the now semi-frantic gestures of the Senora, I walked through the door and down the rickety homemade wooden staircase.
Any veteran cop or EMT can confirm what I encountered next.
Fresh, hot blood smells, well, bloody.
In that white linen and satin curtained, candlelit, draped room, I saw maybe 30 people all staring transfixed at a rough-hewn, white, painted wooden altar, where tall, hooded men in white, blood-soaked vestments were slaughtering birds and animals as their religious duty called them.
That blood smell came from that white, now red-streaked table where streams of red liquid pooled and ran in furrows down the concrete floor towards the mass gathering of singing worshippers.
My Police Academy training, and my multiple years of dealing with heroin infused hookers, meth addicts, and crack-monsters hadn’t prepared me to be looking at cages full of semi-fluttering headless pigeons, and a partially decapitated pregnant female goat.
This had suddenly become what I call a “statue moment”.
In uniform, I didn’t move my body a molecule, but my eyes were taking in 3 tall men holding LARGE blood-dripping, no-doubt razor-sharp knives. At the same time, they looked back at me, frozen in unison, to see a fully armored and uninvited apparition who had a steady right hand on the grip of a blue-metallic, shiny hand-cannon.
Law enforcement can be defined as a series of events that more often than not go from bad to worse, and frequently also go to ca-ca quickly.
As a parishioner in the crowd now approached me while taking off his white and blood red-drop spotted robe, I saw that he was wearing a very expensive Brooks Brothers 3-piece suit and had blue plastic covers over what would no doubt be fashionable penny-loafer shoes. My cop-sense whispered,” Oh goody, a lawyer.”
He stopped walking smartly just outside my defensive circle, and after giving me a slow eyeball exam from combat boots to uniform hat, announced:
“I represent this Santeria Congregation, and in that you are intruding, I am formally demanding that you leave immediately!!!”
I’ve been known one way or for my “all in” way of dealing with unpleasant events. I made eye contact with this fashion plate and, after returning his rude-ish visual assessment, I said:” I’d like your business card, Councilor, and then I’ll go to my station to make a report.” With a lawyerly, patented pursed-lip smile, he handed me an expensive, embossed Law Firm card and, putting his manicured hand out, asked for my card in return.
Of course, I had business cards of my own, but didn’t want this snooty troll to have one ( I paid for mine !), so I thumbed my brass name tag, and said “ it spells with two FF’s’ before turning slowly around and walking deliberately up the stairs.
Back at Mission Station, I carefully wrote a “Suspicious Occurrence “report with a subheading note to copy the whole thing to the District Animal Control Officer and the City Building Inspection Department.
I handed the report to Sgt Joe C, the most catholic supervisor on duty at the time. After his eyebrows came down from the ceiling, he approved the whole thing, saying: “Good Job, Dave, make me a copy for Police Chaplain Heany.”
Authors note; As per Wikipedia: “Santeria is a syncretic religion that combines Catholic practices and African folk beliefs1234. It originated in Cuba among the enslaved Yoruba people from West Africa24. Santeria practitioners worship a pantheon of deities called orishas, who act as mediators between humans and the divine3. Santeria is more prevalent than Catholicism in Cuba, and has spread to other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America14.”
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