Here We Go Again!

The Long Beach Police Department did not deploy its pioneering mental health team Saturday night when an officer fatally shot a mentally ill Samoan American man as he left a neighborhood birthday party, a department spokesmen said Monday.

Some mental health experts say Saturday’s shooting is exactly the type of situation that special programs like the Long Beach Police Mental Evaluation Team are meant to defuse. Developed in the 1990s, the program teams a police officer with a mental health professional. They are on call seven days a week until midnight.

“It is very disappointing, because Long Beach is one of the few that has a mental health evaluation team,” said Richard Van Horn, president of the nonprofit Mental Health America of Los Angeles.

Add the LBPD, to the category of criminal injustice next to the umbrella leader LAPD and its associates: Inglewood PD, NYPD, and others.