LBPD a.m. Watch Commander Lt. Melvin McGuire tells LBREPORT.com that at about 1:20 a.m., officers responded to shots reported in the area of South St./Linden Ave. (400 block E. South St.), didn't find any person(s) hit but confirmed that a building was struck by gunfire. Lt McGuire confirmed it was a "246" shooting [meaning shots at an inhabited dwelling] and says a witness indicated the shots may have been related to a dispute in the area. LBPD is investigating what took place as possibly gang related.

Jan 1, 2018 to date: Red Xs=homicides; Blue Xs= shootings, person wounded; Brown Xs=shots fired at victim(s), not hit; Purple Xs=shots at occupied residence/vehicle; Green Xs= shots at unoccupied vehicle/residence; Grey Xs=shots fired (no hit, no target identified); Orange X's=non-fatal stabbings; Blue * asterisk=victim hit, police unable to locate crime scene. Map is unofficial. A separate map (not shown here) shows shootings in Central LB.

[Scroll down for further.]

For context, LBREPORT.com provides a map below showing cumulated shootings in the area Jan. 1, 2014-Dec. 31, 2017:

The Nov. 23 shooting comes three weeks after four people (one adult and three juveniles) were shot/sounded in the neighborhood northeast of South St./Orange Ave. (Nov. 2, 9th Dist., just north of 8th dist. line.)

The Nov. 2 shooting was the third time gunfire occurred in 9th Council district neighborhoods in the preceding week. On Oct 29, gunfire damaged vehicles with no person(s) hit in NE NLB just south of the 91 freeway between Paramount and Downey Aves. On Oct. 26, police found evidence of gunfire with no person(s) hit in the 6100 block of Linden Ave., an area slated to become the western side of a new retail center fronting Atlantic Ave. south of Harding St.

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The NLB portion of the 8th Council district had homicides in the area of Atlantic Ave./52nd St. in Sept. (LBCC student Guy Alford, shot to death in a fast-food drive-through) and in August (a man found dead of blunt force trauma.) On August 30, a man was shot/wounded at midmorning in the busy 5300 block of LB Blvd. south of Market St.

NLB Council incumbents Richardson (9th dist.) and Austin (8th dist.) have expended considerable efforts and public resources in seeking to advance the area's economic development and revitalization, hoping to a North Long Beach renaissance.

The NLB shootings follow multiple recent Central LB shootings (including a double-homicide in the past week reported here.

LBREPORT.com maintains a continually updated chart on our front page (www.LBREPORT.com) showing cumulated shootings and fatal shootings by Council district. [LBREPORT.com has repeatedly called the visibly disproportionate impact on working class LB neighborhoods the most serious inequity in the City of Long Beach.]

To date, neither of NLB's two incuments, nor any other LB Councilmember(s), have agendized an item to restore funding for LBPD's field anti-gang unit, eliminated by Council budget actions under Mayor Foster and not restored despite voter-approval of the Measure A sales tax increase under Mayor Garcia (endorsed by former Mayors Foster and O'Neill, June 2016) that now brings City Hall roughly $50+ million in additional annual revenue.

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LBPD taxpayers currently receive 186 fewer budgeted citywide deployable officers than the City of LB previously provided. To date, Mayor Garcia has recommended, and the current Council has voted to restore, budgeted funding that has restored 22 citywide deployable officers to date out of 208 erased by Councils that included then-Councilman Garcia and then-Councilman/now-Vice Mayor Dee Andrews. (Other nearby cities weathered the "great recession" without erasing roughly 20% of their police levels for taxpayers.)

The chart below shows LB's current per capita police level for taxpayers compared to police levels provided by City Councils in Los Angeles and Signal Hill with details here

The leadership of LB's Police Officers Association didn't testify in opposition to the reduction in police officers (the largest in the more than 100+ year history of the city of Long Beach.) LBPOA's PAC was the largest single contributor to the campaign for the Measure A sales tax increase and in the most recent election cycles supported the re-election of LB's Council's incumbents.

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