Couple File Claim in Disruption of Wedding

A couple whose New Year’s Eve wedding plans were disrupted when the groom was picked up in a police dragnet filed a $150,000 claim Wednesday against the city of Los Angeles, alleging false arrest and racial discrimination.

John and Jamie Hill planned to marry shortly before midnight Dec. 31 in the garden of a Hollywood church. Instead, the ceremony was hastily performed in the hall of the North Hollywood police station, where John was taken in handcuffs by officers searching for an African-American man suspected of carjacking and armed robbery.

“John would never have been stopped and arrested if he were not an African-American male driving in a mainly white and Hispanic community,” said the couple’s attorney, Gloria Allred, at a City Hall news conference Wednesday. “Just because a person is black doesn’t give police the right to stop him. Every black person doesn’t look alike.”

Allred said the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement agencies frequently harass black males because of their color. She cited several cases involving prominent blacks, including May 8 incidents involving 1984 Olympic triple jump gold medalist Al Joyner, who was pulled over twice by Los Angeles officers. Joyner, who was not arrested, contended that the traffic stops were racially motivated. But police said in both cases they had reason to believe that Joyner might have committed a crime, including erratic driving.

Police also defended their handling of the Hill case Wednesday, saying John Hill, 33, acted suspiciously.

“It’s very unusual for someone to state they are going to their wedding when they are dirty and the hour is late and they can’t even give their fiancee’s address,” said Capt. Charles Labrow, head of the North Hollywood station.

Labrow also said that when officers stopped John Hill, they discovered a warrant for the arrest of a man with the same name. It took several hours to confirm that the warrant was for a different man, Labrow said.

“I think it’s outrageous,” Labrow said. “The Police Department of this city is once again being used by people merely out to financially enhance themselves.”

But Allred said John Hill was dirty because he was heading home after working a 24-hour shift as a maintenance mechanic at a soda factory in Vernon. He offered to take the officers to his fiancee’s apartment, which was one block from where he was stopped, but they refused, Allred said.

She called the arrest warrant “a pretext,” saying it was the first time she had heard of it.

If the city turns down the claim or fails to respond within 45 days, the Hills plan to file a lawsuit that will include a request for punitive damages, Allred said.

Labrow said police brought in the chaplain in an effort “to do right” and marry the couple. But the Hills, who were present at the news conference, said they suffered emotional distress as a result of the incident.

“Instead of having a private ceremony in a beautiful setting, we were married in the main lobby of the police station with all of the officers who had just degraded and humiliated John watching,” Jamie Hill, 31, said. “The entire ceremony took no more than 10 seconds, and it was a desecration of all a wedding ceremony should be.”