Polishing the Ashlar: How Modern Policing Is Confronting Its Rough Edges

In Freemasonry, the movement from Rough Ashlar to Perfect Ashlar is the story of a life: a common stone, chosen for its potential, gradually shaped into something that can bear weight in a sacred structure. As The Temple Within explains, “The Rough Ashlar represents potential and possibility, while the Perfect Ashlar embodies the fulfillment of that potential through deliberate and disciplined action.” This transformation mirrors the work of modern policing, where agencies across the nation are beginning to acknowledge their rough edges—cultural, ethical, procedural—and engaging in the deliberate labor of refinement.

Over the past year, two concrete developments illustrate how policing institutions are engaging in what Masons would call “ashlar work”: the Louisville Metro Police Department’s federal consent decree and the national expansion of scenario-based de-escalation training. These efforts, though different in scale, reveal the same underlying truth: meaningful reform requires the courage to face imperfection and the discipline to reshape it.

The Masonic Blueprint: Rough Ashlar, Perfect Ashlar, and the Trestleboard

The Temple Within identifies a triad of transformation: the Rough Ashlar, the Perfect Ashlar, and the Trestleboard. “The Rough Ashlar represents the beginning of the journey, full of potential but requiring refinement. The Perfect Ashlar symbolizes the ultimate goal: a man who embodies virtue, wisdom, and moral discipline. The Trestleboard acts as the guiding plan, ensuring that progress is intentional and aligned with Masonic principles.”

Two principles are especially relevant to policing:

1. The stone is chosen for its potential.

2. The work must follow a plan.

When we ask how police agencies change, we are really asking whether they are recruiting the right people from the “quarry of life” and whether they are forming those people according to a clear ethical blueprint. These questions sit behind every serious reform effort, including Louisville’s.

Case Study 1: Louisville’s Consent Decree as a Civic Trestleboard

In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisville Metro Government entered into a court-enforceable consent decree following a pattern-or-practice investigation prompted by the killing of Breonna Taylor. The Justice Department described the decree as a “blueprint for reform,” requiring changes that touch the core of police culture and operations. These include:

• mandatory de-escalation techniques
• use of force only when reasonable, necessary, and proportional
• fair and impartial enforcement
• expanded behavioral-health crisis responses
• public reporting and independent monitoring

This structure is, in Masonic terms, a trestleboard. It transforms broad aspiration—“restore trust,” “improve safety”—into specific, enforceable labor.

The Temple Within notes that the Mason must “remove from ourselves all that is impure and unrefined, allowing us to become living stones fit for the spiritual building of the Temple.” Louisville’s reforms parallel this process: identifying constitutional violations, racial disparities, and inadequate crisis responses, and striking at them deliberately.

Scholarly research on consent decrees reinforces the importance of clarity and accountability. Analyses of previous decrees in cities such as Ferguson and Pittsburgh show that reforms falter when municipalities lack transparency or when community participation is weak. A trestleboard not read—and not followed—cannot build a temple.

Louisville’s decree attempts to address this by requiring community oversight, independent evaluation, and public reporting. Whether this will succeed depends on whether the city remains committed to the slow, difficult work of shaping the stone.

Case Study 2: Scenario-Based De-escalation and the Ethics of the Common Gavel

A second major reform effort involves the national expansion of scenario-based de-escalation training. In 2024, bipartisan federal legislation was introduced directing the Department of Justice to create and distribute scenario-based training on use of force, crisis intervention, and ethical decision-making. The bill also provided grants so departments of all sizes could participate.

Supporters emphasized that such training saves lives, improves officer safety, and equips officers to respond more effectively to mental-health crises. With nearly six in ten police encounters involving a person with a serious mental illness, lawmakers framed the initiative as essential to both community safety and officer preparedness.

From a Masonic perspective, scenario-based de-escalation training is the institutional equivalent of the Common Gavel. The Gavel, as The Temple Within explains, is the tool used “to ‘chip away’ vices and excesses, molding [the Mason] into a virtuous being.” In law enforcement, those vices include impulsive escalation, failure to recognize mental-health distress, and reliance on force as the primary tool of control. Training designed to chip away at these habits is moral work, not merely tactical instruction.

The virtues emphasized in The Temple Within—temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice—align perfectly with modern de-escalation models:

• Temperance: control of emotion and impulse
• Fortitude: courage under stress
• Prudence: sound, life-preserving judgment
• Justice: fairness and restraint in application of authority

Research on policing tools reinforces that procedural changes must be embedded in culture. Studies on body-worn cameras show that rules governing how footage is reviewed can either enhance accountability or compromise due process. Crisis-response research highlights the importance of interagency partnerships and officer wellness. All these findings point to a single truth: the tools of reform must be used with discipline, integrity, and purpose—exactly as Masons are taught to labor.

Culture as a Living Stone: Beyond Policy Into Formation

Both Louisville’s decree and the national shift toward scenario-based training demonstrate that culture is malleable—but only with sustained intention. Reform organizations emphasize that “police are not born; they are made.” What officers are trained, encouraged, and permitted to do ultimately defines the culture they inhabit.

This mirrors a central theme in The Temple Within: “labor is worship,” and a Mason’s work is judged not by words but by conduct. When policing is framed as a vocation dedicated to protecting the vulnerable, upholding justice, and exercising authority under restraint, it aligns with this vision. When framed instead around domination or unquestioned group loyalty, it diverges sharply from both democratic and Masonic ideals.

Reform is therefore a question of formation:

• Recruitment asks: What stones do we bring from the quarry?
• Training asks: What tools do we place in their hands?
• Policy and oversight ask: What trestleboard do we draw, and do we build to it?

Research, federal oversight, and emerging best practices all suggest the same conclusion: institutions improve only when they commit to structural accountability, ethical formation, and ongoing evaluation.

Conclusion: Before the Stone Becomes Strong, It Must Become True

The Temple Within reminds us that “the progression from Rough Ashlar to Perfect Ashlar is a lifelong journey,” measured by daily effort, not instant transformation. Policing faces a similar journey. The Louisville consent decree provides a trestleboard for one city that must rebuild trust after profound failures. National scenario-based de-escalation initiatives offer the tools needed to form officers capable of restraint, empathy, and good judgment.

Benjamin Franklin observed that without continual growth, words like improvement and success lose their meaning. Institutions, like individuals, become what they practice. If police agencies commit to confronting their rough edges—bias, impatience, flawed tactics, and weak accountability—they, too, can move toward the strength that comes only from truth.

Before the stone becomes strong, it must become true. The hope for both Masons and police officers is that strength and truth may one day be indistinguishable in the lives of those who serve and in the institutions entrusted with public safety.

References

Department of Justice. (2024). Justice Department secures agreement with Louisville Metro Government to reform Louisville Metro’s and Louisville Metro Police Department’s unconstitutional and unlawful practices. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Farber, H. B. (2024). Policies for police body-worn cameras that preserve due process. American Criminal Law Review.

Foster, R. E. (n.d.). The Temple Within. Unpublished manuscript.

National Policing Institute. (2025). Building resilience in policing: Preventing stress and supporting officer mental health.

O’Connor, A. (2024). Examining the effectiveness of consent decrees in relation to police accountability. IMAGINE, University of California, Santa Barbara.

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (2024). Implementation of De-escalation Training Act Program.

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (2025). Safer Outcomes: Behavioral-health collaboration in law enforcement.

U.S. House of Representatives. (2024). Law Enforcement Scenario-Based Training for Safety and De-escalation Act of 2024.