Civilians in a LEMC - The Patch, the Problem, and What I Built Because of It
- Alliance Admin
- Jan 27, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
A personal account of the lessons that shaped the Alliance of Law Abiding Motorcycle Clubs.
I want to tell you something honest about how I got here.
Not the organizational version. Not the governance framework, the bylaws, or the founding principles. Those exist, and they matter, and you can read about them elsewhere on this site.
What I want to tell you is the personal version. The part that lives underneath all of that.
Because the Alliance was not built from theory. It was built from experience. And some of that experience forced me to look at myself as closely as I looked at the organizations around me.
The First Patch
My first patch came from a Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club.
I was accepted as a civilian into a club of men I genuinely admired, and I cannot overstate what that meant to me at the time.
My bike, my vest, and I were inseparable. I wore my vest everywhere. When I came home, it did not go into a closet. It stayed visible, a daily reminder that I was a patched member of a law enforcement motorcycle club. That patch represented something I carried with real pride.
The club was a single chapter in Missouri, originally founded by officers from a local department. When I joined, membership was roughly divided between law enforcement and civilians.
What I did not know at the time was that a conflict was already forming beneath the surface.
Some of the civilian members had begun taking liberties that others interpreted as stolen valor. The gap between what those members were and what the patch implied had grown too wide to ignore.
Eventually the chapter split.
Law enforcement went one direction. Civilians went another. I went with the cops. Once divided, they never rode together again.
That experience left a mark on me that would influence everything I built afterward.
Growth and What It Cost
One of my strengths at the time was marketing and communication. I had been invited into the club specifically because I could help bring attention to it and support its growth.
Within two years, the club expanded from one small chapter into more than twenty-five chapters across the country.
At the time, that felt like success. What it actually was, was a stress test. And the structure failed it.
The bylaws required chapters to maintain at least fifty percent law enforcement membership, with chapter presidents being active or retired officers. By the third year of expansion, only two chapters were still in compliance.
Every attempt to bring chapters back into compliance created backlash, political maneuvering, and in some cases direct threats. Personal influence began to outweigh mission and structure.
What had been built through hard work and a shared vision began to fracture.
Not because there were not enough members, but because there was not enough structure to hold the organization together as it grew.
When it became clear that the mission had been lost, it was time for me to leave.
I believed that with the experience I had gained, I could build something stronger.
The Second Club
And the Lesson I Had to Learn About Myself
The next club was built intentionally.
I designed the patch. I wrote the bylaws. I created the operational procedures and the organizational framework. Every lesson from the first club was applied to the structure of the second.
And eventually something else happened. The club again became heavily civilian. But this time I had to recognize something uncomfortable.
I was part of the problem.
Almost every time I wore my vest in public, someone would ask me a simple question.
“Are you a cop?” The answer was no. But I did not hate the question.
My vest was covered in blue. My back carried an LE cube. Every vest in the club looked nearly identical. The image we projected created confusion about who we actually were.
The vest gave others the impression I was something I was not. And I carried a certain confidence because of it. The patch had become a kind of social shield.
Recognizing that forced me to take a more honest look at what identity, affiliation, and respect actually mean inside the motorcycle club world.
Years later, I became a firefighter. I completed the schooling, passed the testing, and joined a department. My vest changed entirely. It became red and clearly identified with the fire service.
For the first time, what I was wearing felt fully earned. There was no ambiguity in it. No assumption. No borrowed identity. That clarity felt different from anything I had worn before.
And that realization stayed with me.
Staying in Your Lane
Stolen valor comes in many forms.
Sometimes it is intentional. Sometimes it is simply the absence of clarity. Wearing something that implies an affiliation you have not earned and allowing others to draw conclusions from it.
Patch holders need to be aware of this.
We need to stay in our lane and take pride in it.
If you are law enforcement, wear blue.
If you are fire, wear red.
If you are military, wear green.
If you are a civilian supporter, wear white and wear it with pride.
There is tremendous value in a civilian force that openly supports law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders. That support matters to the people who serve.
But it must be honest. Anything less becomes borrowed credibility from the men and women who risk their lives every day.
The five-part patch structure developed through Independence Embroidery was built as a direct response to this issue. It created a framework that allows members to identify their affiliation clearly and honestly.
You can read more about that design in the Alliance organizational timeline.
What I Built Because of All of It
The Alliance of Law Abiding Motorcycle Clubs was founded in 2013, not as a reaction to one event, but as the result of everything I had experienced through multiple clubs, years of expansion, and an honest accounting of my own role in the problems I had witnessed.
The Alliance was built around a few simple principles that remain non-negotiable.
No dues.
No application fees.
No profit motive.
Membership is not purchased. It is earned through conduct. How a club carries itself. How it treats others. How it represents the law-abiding motorcycle community.
Written bylaws were established from the beginning. Governance structures were documented before disputes could arise.
The no-dues model was intentionally designed to eliminate an entire category of conflict before it could ever take hold inside the organization.
The full history of the Alliance and the ecosystem that surrounds it is covered in the Alliance timeline.
But the truth is simpler than any framework. I did not build the Alliance because I had all the answers. I built it because I had lived enough of the questions. Every fracture I witnessed. Every bylaw dispute. Every moment I looked in the mirror and recognized my own role in the problems around me.
All of it became part of the structure.
The Honest Version
If you are reading this as a club member, a prospect, or someone trying to understand what the Alliance represents, there is something I want you to know. This organization was not built by someone who had everything figured out from the beginning. It was built by someone who made mistakes, learned from them, and refused to repeat them.
The structure exists because experience demanded it.
The standards exist because the community deserves them.
And the mission remains unchanged because it was never about me.
The Larger Story
The story above is the personal side of how the Alliance came to exist. It is the part that shaped the decisions, the standards, and the structure behind the organization.
But it is only one piece of the history.
The full timeline, from the expansion of the Gunners Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club, to the founding of Blue Daos in 2012, to the creation of the Alliance in 2013 and the launch of Full Throttle Full Mag in 2014, is documented in our organizational history.
If you want to understand how those experiences became the framework that supports the Alliance today, you can read the full history here:
Trust. Respect. Mission.
John “Wyld Stile” Larson
Founder Alliance of Law-Abiding Motorcycle Clubs
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