Sounds to me more like simple stupidity on the part of the police. This deputy didn’t have enough to keep himself busy... so he is just out harassing innocent looking people.
Pulling over an old couple on the highway and questioning them about drug smuggling probably looked like an easy and safe way for the deputy to spend part of the day. If he pulled over people who looked like they really might be smuggling drugs he most likely would have had a much more stressful and dangerous situation on his hands.
My wife and I are middle aged, friendly, and completely cooperative in every way. So who do you think got pulled out of line and strip searched by the TSA at the Orlando International Airport? There were all sorts of people who looked much more suspicious, but they probably looked like they would give the TSA workers a hard time while reaching their daily strip search quota.
I hear ya. I seem to have some characteristic that they are looking for and I never figured out what it was. I’m just an average white guy, I don’t even have any tattoos or anything. But every damned time, I get pulled out of the boarding line for an extra search. The last time I flew, they confiscated my pair of mini-wire cutters out of my tool bag and were trying to take apart my Fluke meter with a screwdriver and I went off on them. I actually vowed to never fly again because of harassment, I just drive now so I guess the bastards won.