Editor, Manteca Bulletin

Never in my wildest dreams would I think that my best friend and I would be “profiled” against at the Pumpkin Fair on Sunday.

We were walking around the fair minding our own business with our biker vests on; we ride with an international motorcycle ministry better known as Bikers For Christ. You can look us up at www.bikersforchrist.org. Here we are as two guys trying to spread the word of Jesus in a lost world and we were approached by a Manteca police officer and asked us to turn our vests inside out or remove them in lieu of what happened in Sparks, Nevada, last weekend when Jethro, President of the San Jose Chapter of the Hells Angels, was shot and killed.

To me, Manteca is grouping all bikers under the same umbrella as the “outlaw” clubs. This is obscene and when you have a beer garden serving beer all day long and drunk people running around the faire, this makes no sense to me! And we as a club are thinking about riding in the Christmas parade, but not if we are all going to be asked to remove our ministerial “colors”. The group is about 40 to 60 strong. Please advise us so we know what to do for the parade. This saddens my heart for the city I call home. Once again, I thought profiling was illegal and for that to happen in my own hometown is crazy. What, once a bad biker, always a bad biker? I think not!

“In God We Trust”
Isaiah 53:5
Billy Rogers