He Prays for Sinners--and Sometimes Arrests Them

Darin McAllister sat hunched in the back of the speeding ambulance, desperately trying to comfort the dying young mother who had just been shot in the back of the head.

“I saw this woman really struggling, really fighting for her life,” he recalled. “I prayed for her, and for her motherless children, and for the hope that they wouldn’t become misguided in a world without her.”

He later was back at the scene of the murder, interviewing potential witnesses, turning over new details to seasoned detectives.

“I climbed telephone poles and went up on roofs looking for bullet casings,” he said. “Trying to find every little bit of information I could. And right now we know who the assailant is and we’re putting a warrant out for his arrest.”

A thin, soft-spoken man, McAllister is a policeman and a preacher. He wears his gun in the pulpit and carries his Bible next to the riot gear in his patrol car.

Frustrated by the high crime rate in the neighborhood around West Angeles Church of God in Christ, where he is associate minister, McAllister joined the Los Angeles Police Department in an effort to do more than just preach against gangs and drugs. Just three months out of the Police Academy, he works today in the Wilshire Division, which encompasses his church and the surrounding community.

In that dual role, the 25-year-old preacher knows that some day he may be forced to fire his service revolver and break one of the Bible’s oldest commandments: Thou shalt not kill.

“I probably unholster my gun at least once every night,” he said, relaxing in his church office, describing the inner conflicts that tear at him everyday when he trades his white robes for a dark blue police uniform.

“I know some day I may have to pull the trigger.’

A native of suburban Chicago, he originally hoped to become a doctor, but he changed course and graduated with a divinity degree several years ago from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla.

McAllister moved to Los Angeles, where he joined the staff of the 7,000-member church, teaching a men’s Sunday school class and leading the youth choir.

That is where the Police Department found him during a recruitment drive in the black community that targeted the churches. Sgt. Joe Peyton said that because church leaders are respected in the black community, it was hoped they could encourage their young parishioners to become police officers.

“But we never thought any minister would sign up,” Peyton said.

Officer Rita Woodle said McAllister helped put together a large recruitment rally at West Angeles Church in July, 1989, which drew more than 100 potential recruits along with representatives from dozens of churches, youth groups and other religious organizations. The rally netted 62 candidates who applied to become officers.

One of them was another minister, but he washed out during a background investigation, police said.

For McAllister, the process was equally difficult. He first had to persuade his wife, Judy, who was skeptical because her husband came from a home where guns were not allowed and his parents were devoutly religious. She was equally concerned about his safety.

“At first it scared me,” she said. “But not anymore. I’m of the persuasion that if God doesn’t protect you, nobody will.”

He also spent long counseling sessions with the church pastor, Bishop Charles Blake, who encouraged him to seek a police career as long as he could find a comfortable middle ground between the two contrasting vocations.

He prayed nightly, and in his inner struggles McAllister decided that police work was as strong a calling as his church ministry. Looking beyond the church walls, he worried about crime and the growing gang and drug warfare. His parishioners would often talk about crime and he occasionally spoke about it in his sermons.

“The church,” he said, “was a light in a dark world.”

He wanted to minister to those outside the church as well.

“I wanted to go into every man’s world with the Gospel,” he said. “Just because I went into the ministry doesn’t mean I have to confine that ministry to the pulpit.”

He found solace in 1 Corinthians 9:19: “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.” Interpreting that verse, he determined that the more he did for people, the more his ministry would grow.

“I really didn’t feel like I was doing enough,” he said of his church work. “My life was so sheltered. I was exposed only to people who were already in the church. I wasn’t in tune with those people who were really hurting.

“In the 1st Corinthians, Paul talks about becoming all things to all men, and that’s what I wanted to do.”

He said his soul-searching also brought him to a realization that God is merciful and loving, but also sometimes can be swift and violent. He recalled the sweeping Old Testament stories of Pharaoh’s charioteers drowned in the Red Sea, and of harlots, gamblers and thieves burned to death by fiery rain in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Interestingly, both his church and police supervisors say he has not strayed from a full commitment to both endeavors. “He’s an excellent, excellent person,” said Blake.

“He’s doing a fantastic job,” said Sgt. Steve Williams. “I think he’s here to stay.”

In August, when McAllister graduated from the Police Academy, he led his class of 98 recruits in a prayer. Out in the streets, he learned that compassion can be one of a police officer’s greatest tools.

Once, he said, he was dispatched to a hospital where a 4-month-old had been taken with severe head injuries. As his fellow officers were arresting the infant’s father, McAllister said, “I held the child against my chest and prayed for him.”

Likewise, he also knows that a police officer’s firm voice and commanding presence go a long way in making converts out of criminals.

He recalled an incident when a thief led police on a foot chase, ending with McAllister cornering the man in a back lot. Gun drawn, he ordered him to slowly pull his hands from his pockets and drop to the ground.

“My church ministry wasn’t even going through my mind,” he said. “I was worrying about what level of force to use with this man. We finally grabbed him and slammed him to the ground.”

If the time comes that he must fire his service revolver, he said, he will be ready.

“There’s always consequences to sin. And if somebody threatens me or someone else, there’s a consequence that will have to be met.

“I will enforce the law,” he said.