Profiling

Many years ago I served on the Diaconal Ministries Committee of my denomination. We met twice a year in Philadelphia. After our move to Modesto, CA, attending meetings involved travel. But we had made great friends when I was serving the church in Wilmington, DE, as pastor, so now I made arrangements to visit friends when I attended DMC meetings. In fact our meeting routinely lasted two days, so I would borrow our friend's car and help transport other commuters to the meeting.

This particular meeting we had made arrangements to stay overnight at the home of one local member of the committee for Friday night, and return to the Committee building Saturday morning to complete our meeting. We were a friendly bunch, so no one was in coat and tie. We wore our casuals. I had forgotten my razor, and was looking extra scruffy. In those days it was not the popular thing to sport a nascent beard all day long. It has become the style today, which frequently irks my wife's prejudiced comments. All the TV heroes seem to have sandpaper chins these days.

Anyway, here was this motley crew (no intended reference to any musical group) on their way to committee meeting early on a Saturday morning, when that fearful black and white with rotating red light appeared behind us. I dutifully pulled the car over to the curb. both officers approached our car. I was asked to get out of the car and come to the back of the car.Later we were told there had been a rash of home burglaries in the Philadelphia suburbs and the suspect car had out of state plates.

Well here we were a car with Delaware plates, my license was for California, another guy was from Rochester, NY, and just for good measure we had a black member of the committee from Denver, CO. No sooner had I emerged from the car when a backup black and white arrived. We were quizzed separately with clipped, accusative attitude. They only relaxed when our separate stories fit. They thought they had nailed the suspects for a moment, and truthfully, so did I.