LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears was taken from her home by ambulance early Thursday and escorted to the hospital by more than a dozen police officers in cars, on motorcycles and in helicopters.
A Los Angeles police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said the 26-year-old pop star was being taken to the hospital to "get help." The Los Angeles Times cited unidentified authorities who said Spears was being placed on a "mental evaluation hold."
Spears was taken to UCLA Medical Center, where her mother, Lynne, was seen leaving its psychiatric hospital at about 5:30 a.m.
When asked by a throng of paparazzi and reporters whether Britney was doing all right, Lynne Spears replied, "Yeah," before leaving in a Range Rover.
Hours earlier, shortly after 1 a.m., the motorcade that pulled away from Spears' residence was nearly the length of a football field. Along with the ambulance, it included police on nearly a dozen motorcycles and in two cruisers. Two police helicopters followed overhead.
The scene was more controlled than the one earlier this month when Spears also was taken away from her home in an ambulance.
On Jan. 3, police were called to her home when she refused to return her two young sons, Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, to ex-husband Kevin Federline, who has custody.
Officers had paramedics haul Spears to a hospital for undisclosed reasons. She was released after a day and a half in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Police also went to Spears' hilltop residence off Mulholland Drive on Monday night after someone reported a swarm of paparazzi trespassing in the singer's gated community. When officers arrived, they didn't see anyone trespassing, police said, but citations were issued for several illegally parked cars.
Spears has been in a highly public downward spiral since filing for divorce from Federline in November 2006.
Her bizarre antics include shaving her head bald, attacking a car with an umbrella and bringing along a paparazzo pal on trips to a courthouse in her child custody case.
Spears' child custody case has become a public spectacle, with her skipping depositions and twice this month arriving at the courthouse but not attending the hearing.
The most recent incident was last week, when Spears showed up at the downtown civil courts building for a chance to persuade a Superior Court commissioner to change his order and allow her to see her sons.
Dressed as if arriving for a cocktail party — wearing bright pink lipstick, sunglasses, shiny gold platform shoes and a very short black dress with a ruffled hem — Spears was driven into an underground garage and then entered the courthouse.
A court spokesman said she got through a security metal detector, then announced, "I want to leave," and returned to her car.
Britney Spear's paparazzo boyfriend Adnan Ghalib is now shopping around six video clips of the mentally unstable star, and is asking for an astounding $2 million. The films reportedly depict the singer at her worst and speaking of herself in third person.
News of the World got a sneak peek at the clips, which they've described as follows:
CLIP No1 shows Britney sitting on her bed wearing a nightie. She talks about herself in the third person and rambles about her childhood. She's heard saying:
"When Britney was a child, she had to work really hard. When she was 13 years old, she won all the beauty pageants."
CLIP No2 shows Brit wrapped in a white bath towel, again perched on the edge of the bed. Talking to thin air, she mumbles:
"Britney has an angel looking out for her, don't you, angel?"
CLIP No3 sees a Britney talking to Adnan, who's holding the camera, and calling him by his pet name Bubba.
She smiles: "I'm really happy. Bubba's here for me now. It's all good."
Adnan is still withholding CLIP No4 and CLIP No5 but CLIP No6, filmed last week, shows Britney crying hysterically after a night out.
What, no sex tape?
