BANGOR – Thirty years ago, a group of eight local police officers, bound by the brotherhood of their job and a love of riding motorcycles, started a fledgling motorcycle club for law enforcement personnel.

Today the Blue Knights Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club has grown tremendously and has spilled over its United States boundaries into 24 other countries.

The club’s international president, Gary Pierce of Graham, Wash., visited the Blue Knights international headquarters in Bangor on Monday to announce that the club has exceeded 18,000 members around the world.

“At 11:30 a.m. this morning … a new chapter brought us up to 18,044 members,” Pierce said while standing outside the headquarters on Alden Street.

The international president also presented the remaining founding members of the Blue Knights with police-style badges, to be worn on their signature blue leather vests, recognizing their status as founders and for three decades of service to the club.

“It is a little token of my appreciation for all they did in founding the organization and making us what we are today,” Pierce said.

The Blue Knights is a social organization that promotes motorcycle safety and family, Pierce said. The club met in July for its 30th annual international convention in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, with more than 700 members traveling on motorcycles to attend. This year, members from Belgium and France also were in attendance.

Blue Knights members are active and retired law enforcement men and women who enjoy riding motorcycles. State and local police, sheriffs, prison service, military police, immigration or customs officers can become members. The only stipulation is that members must have the power to arrest and must own their own motorcycles.

The idea for the Blue Knights started with Ed Gallant, who now lives in Milton, Fla., but at the time worked for the Bangor Police Department.

In the spring of 1974, Gallant, Urban Dyer and Chuck Shuman, who both worked for the Brewer Police Department, met over coffee at the former Black Knight Restaurant in Brewer and decided to form the club to meet other people in law enforcement, who liked to ride motorcycles.

The initial founding members, Wayne LaBree and the late Joel Rudom of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department, Mike Hall of the Brewer Police Department, Charles Gesner of Maine Probation and Patrol, Bill Robinson of the Maine State Police, and Doug Miner of the State Warden Service, attended the club’s first meetings along with Gallant, Shuman and Dyer.

Soon after, fliers advertising the club were made, bylaws were established and the rest, as they say, is history.

The club has evolved into much more than the founding members ever imagined.

“We’ve gone from eight members to 18,000,” Shuman, now retired, said. “We started in the basement of my house, and now we’re in every station in this nation, and in every province in Canada and other countries.”

The Blue Knights’ motto, “Ride with Pride,” was created after Shuman became the first president of the club and he was leading the group on a trip to Calais.

“I looked in the mirror and saw the other Knights riding really proud,” he said.

After that ride, all Blue Knights correspondence was signed with the motto, which continues to be used today.

The club’s long history has not been without its potholes. When the Blue Knights first rolled down the street 30 years ago, members recall that community people would scurry out of their way, afraid of the roar of the engines and the “biker” stereotype.

Even though the club is composed entirely of law enforcement personnel, the founders still had a hard time breaking through the rough-and-tough image portrayed in such movies as “Easy Rider” in 1969 and by other more notorious motorcycle clubs of the era.

“A lot of people didn’t ride [motorcycles] because of the image,” Shuman said.

LaBree recounted a trip from the club’s first year.

“On a trip to New Hampshire, we were passing through Pittsfield and pulled into a picnic area,” he said Monday. “There was a family of tourists there and as soon as we pulled in they packed up their lunches, which they obviously weren’t finished with, and were leaving.”

That day, members realized the importance of image and made it part of their job to squash the “bad boy” stereotype. Soon after the outing, the club began sending scouts ahead of the pack to inform people that a law enforcement motorcycle club was heading that way.

“Then when we showed up, the kids would come over and check out the bikes, and sometimes we’d give them rides,” Shuman said. “The Blue Knights is a family club.”

Over the last three decades, 530 Blue Knight clubs have been established in 25 countries around the world. The members have raised more than $4.2 million for charity, and each club has a designated charity or two.

For the Maine 1 Chapter of the Blue Knights, Pine Tree Camp, a Maine camp for children with disabilities, and the Ronald McDonald House, which provides housing for family members of hospitalized children, are the two main charities, chapter President Sean Emery said.

He said the biggest reward is the smiles that shine from the faces of the children that are helped.

“It’s just awesome,” Emery, a sergeant with the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department, said Monday. “It’s awesome to have fun and benefit kids at the same time. Work plays into it, but we all want to have fun and go for a ride.”

The international president couldn’t agree more.

“Even a feeble excuse is enough of an excuse for a ride,” Pierce said.