Police Arrest Groom's Plan to Get to Church on Time : Nuptials: He is mistakenly detained as robbery suspect. With wedding ruined, couple marry at station.

By FREDERICK M. MUIR

Jan. 2, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It was supposed to be a fairy-tale wedding: a New Year’s Eve ceremony in a garden, with guests and a minister, a gown and vows written just for the occasion.

But for Jaime Blake and John Hill the dream turned into a truly grim tale, as the two settled for a hasty union in the worn and crowded hallway of the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood station shortly after midnight Friday.

The groom, heading home after a 24-hour shift as a maintenance mechanic at a soda plant in Vernon, was picked up a block from his fiancee’s home in a police dragnet about 9 p.m. Thursday. The officers were searching for an African-American man suspected of carjacking and armed robbery.

Dressed in his greasy overalls and with a fresh paycheck in his pocket, “I kept telling them, ‘You’re making a big mistake, I’m supposed to get married at 11:00,’ ” said Hill, 33, tired, saddened and still a bit perplexed Friday morning.

The minister, meanwhile, was on hold. The 20 invited guests milled around impatiently at a Hollywood chapel. The wedding gown stayed laid out on the bed, along with Hill’s suit, gifts for the wedding party and some flowers.

“I thought, ‘He’s dead. He’s fallen asleep at the wheel.’ I was worried sick,” said Blake, 31, who is white and angry at what she feels is a police practice of stereotyping black males as criminals.

About 11:15, she received a call from an officer, attempting to confirm Hill’s alibi.

“Are you waiting for somebody?” Blake said the officer asked. “Is there some reason you’re waiting for him?”

“They said he was detained for suspicion of robbery,” said Blake. “I said, ‘You’re crazy.’ ”

But the craziness was not over.

Hill, released from handcuffs after more than three hours, told officers: “Hey, I’m glad to be let go, but by now the chapel is closed.”

“We don’t have many weddings around here,” Sgt. Ray Davies said he told Hill. Trying to set things straight, the watch commander on duty offered the services of the LAPD reserve chaplain, the Rev. Kevin Smith, to perform the nuptials.

“He had a problem, and we were just trying to help him out,” Davies said. “These things happen.”

Hill called his bride. “He said, ‘They have a chaplain here,’ “she said. “I said, ‘Oh My God.’ ”

Although they both had doubts about going through with the ceremony, maid of honor Shirin Elsharkawi said they did it in the end because of their love, because they didn’t want to disappoint each other.

“She was trying to be strong for him, and he was trying to be strong for her,” Elsharkawi said.

But despite good intentions--and LAPD efforts to make the best of a bad situation--Blake was shattered.

“It was so awful, I can’t believe it,” she said. “I still can’t believe it.”

For starters, the minister could not remember much of the wedding service besides asking for the “I do’s.” And to both the bride and groom’s dismay, the reverend neglected to ask for the ring or suggest the traditional kiss.

“I was so embarrassed,” said Blake, who wept through much of the truncated hallway ceremony as curious officers looked on.

“How many times can you redo a News Year’s Eve wedding?” said Elsharkawi. “Do you want a lot of cops who just arrested your husband watching your wedding? It was a sideshow for the officers after they made their mistake.”

Ironically, Blake and some friends had a feeling that the North Hollywood neighborhood, crawling with police that night, might be a little dangerous for a black man.

LAPD helicopters, patrol cars and canine units blanketed the area around Blake’s apartment shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday, searching for an armed suspect who abandoned his car and eluded officers on foot.

As Blake, Elsharkawi and friend Terrance Brooks drove through the neighborhood illuminated by the blinking lights of the patrol cars, Brooks said: “I hope they don’t stop us. I’m black.”

“We watched the helicopters, and little did we know that (the police) had picked up her fiancee,” said Elsharkawi. “It’s a way of life in L.A.,” said Elsharkawi, who is from Canada but, like many people worldwide, is well-acquainted with the video images of black motorist Rodney G. King being beaten by Los Angeles police.

Explaining the department’s actions in detaining Hill, Sgt. Davies said officers are “duty bound” to investigate all leads. “We talk to the victim, we get a description, and generally speaking, three-quarters of the time, we get the right guy.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “this time, we interfered with (Hill’s) nuptials.”

As for officers dismissing Hill’s insistence that he was on his way to his wedding, Davies sighed and said, “Everybody’s the wrong guy.

“He (Hill) was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s one price we pay for living in this modern society.”

The bride could not brush it off so easily.

“It’s left such a foul taste in my mouth,” Blake said. “John said, ‘We’ll do it again.’ But I say, not for a while. . . . John said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll tell our grandkids about this.’ I’m not so sure what to tell them.”