Police did not deploy mental unit

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.

Events moved too quickly to call in mental health experts to work with Roketi Su’e, 46, before he was shot near his Long Beach home, department spokeswoman Nancy Pratt said Monday. Instead, police dispatched two North Division officers to check out reports of a man behaving erratically and violently, she said.

“Before they had a chance to do anything else, he charged,” Pratt said.

Relatives and neighbors dispute police accounts that he was violent. They say officers overreacted and that he was unarmed, shirtless and lying face down when he was shot in the back.

“They sent out police officers who were incompetent. They weren’t prepared,” said Su’e’s nephew, La-auli To-omalatai.

An autopsy was scheduled for today.

The family has hired the law firm founded by the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and will hold a news conference this morning.

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.

Family members say Su’e was diagnosed two years ago with schizophrenia and terminal lung cancer. He sometimes experienced “bad days” and had yelling episodes. Relatives that he lived with on 67th Street had, on previous occasions, called police to take him overnight. The police knew Su’e, and he did not resist leaving with them, relatives said.

Su’e was usually easygoing and loving, dancing with children in his neighborhood, singing to them and playing guitar at the local Samoan church, relatives and friends said. Three children interviewed Sunday on the 67th Street cul-de-sac said that he played football and basketball with them and became their mentor. He was dancing with them Sunday, shortly before police arrived, they said.

Neighbors say the two officers used a Taser device on him to force him to the ground. They hit him in the face and mouth and shot him in the back five or six times as he lay on the sidewalk, they say.

Pratt said Su’e charged the officers, grabbed a baton and hit them. She did not know if the department had a mental health team on hand to send to the scene, she said.

“I can only speak theoretically,” she said. “Is the team available? Are they out on another call? Are they transporting someone to a hospital? When we arrive on scene, we need time to assess the situation and act accordingly.”

Several area mental-health leaders praised the city’s Mental Evaluation Team program.

“I’m impressed with both the officers and the mental health professionals,” said Paul Barry, associate director of the Village, a Long Beach program associated with Mental Health America that assists the mentally ill.

“They respond with strength but mostly with sensitivity. They’re great listeners. They’re very skilled at deflating situations,” Barry said. “Long Beach and other cities like this are really leaders in the field.”

The program expanded after the 2002 police shooting of Marcella Byrd, 57, a retired nurse with a history of mental illness.

When Byrd brandished an 8-inch knife at police on Pine Avenue in Long Beach, she was shot by officers and died within hours. Her death led to widespread debate about how police can successfully identify a mentally ill suspect before violence ensues.

Long Beach Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal, a licensed family counselor with a degree in community clinical psychology, pushed for expanding the Mental Evaluation Team program after the Byrd shooting. She praises the Mental Evaluation Team program and the city Police Department’s commitment to the issue.

“I would say the department has really addressed mental health issues and challenges in the community more than any department I’m aware of,” she said.

But Su’e’s family sees it differently. He was not a violent man, and the police were familiar with him, they said. His nephew, To-omalatai, said he was disappointed that the department’s program appeared not to have worked, and he questioned if it had enough staff.

“We just want justice for my uncle,” he said.

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deborah.schoch@latimes.com