A police officer in Houston shot and killed a man on Saturday, claiming that the man was threatening them and that he “[f]ear[ed] for his partner’s safety and his own safety” at the time of the shooting. The circumstances of the shooting, however, raise serious questions about just how threatening the shooting victim could have been:

A Houston police officer shot and killed a one-armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair Saturday inside a group home after police say the double amputee threatened the officer and aggressively waved a metal object that turned out to be a pen. . . . [Police spokeswoman Jodi Silva] said the man came “within inches to a foot” of the officer and did not follow instructions to calm down and remain still.

“Fearing for his partner’s safety and his own safety, he discharged his weapon,” Silva told The Associated Press.

Police did not immediately release the name of the man who was killed. They had been called to the home after a caretaker there called and reported that the man in wheelchair was causing a disturbance.

The owner of the group home, John Garcia, told the Houston Chronicle that the man had a history of mental illness and had been living at the house about 18 months. Garcia said the man had told him that he lost a leg above the knee and all of one arm when he was hit by a train.

This is not the first example of Houston police using a questionable amount of force against a mentally ill suspect. A 2007 study determined that Houston police unnecessarily used Tasers on the mentally ill, even when police were warned about the person’s mental health condition.

A 60-year-old man who had long suffered from bipolar disorder died in a jail cell Friday evening, hours after police tased him and placed him in isolation. Bill Williams was arrested for shoplifting at a gas station in Snohomish County, Washington. He had recently stopped taking his medication, and his family said they called the police and his case manager the previous week saying he needed to be hospitalized, but were ignored. KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reports:

“His life was so difficult. Anyway for it to end like this, and die alone in his cell, is just incomprehensible,” said Williams’ daughter, Trina Blau. “There’s a hospital right there where they could have shot him up with a sedative to figure it out. Instead, they shot him with a Taser and he’s dead.”

Surveillance video from the convenience store showed Williams jumping over the counter to grab cigarettes, and then come back for a six-pack of beer. . . .

Williams’ family said he was off his medication, and Blau called 911 Thursday trying to get him taken to the mental hospital.

“They talked to him for 15 seconds. If they would have talked to him 10 seconds longer, they would have seen he wasn’t lucid,” said Blau. “I firmly believe my dad would be alive if they would have just taken the time to listen.”

If the county medical examiner’s office determines that the Taser was the cause of death, it will add to the list of recent deaths linked to Tasers and police violence in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. In July, another mentally ill man who suffered from bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders was tased to death. And in 2010, a spate of five deaths resulting from police violence were reported in one week, including two from Tasers. KIRO also reported that just last month, a deaf woman who called 911 for help was tased in her ribs and stomach.

This past week, a Department of Justice report found a pattern of abuse against the mentally ill in Portland that included the frequent, unnecessary use of Tasers. And a 2007 study in Houston found that police unnecessarily used Tasers on the mentally ill, even when they were warned about the person’s mental health condition.

This Thursday, the Justice Department concluded a roughly year-long review review of the treatment of the mentally ill by the police in Portland, Oregon. The report, according to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez, found that “there is reasonable cause to believe that [Portland Police Bureau] is engaged in a pattern or practice of using excessive force against people with mental illness, or those perceived to have mental illness.” The Seattle Times reported a few of the incidents that make up this pattern, including, but not limited to:

• The fatal shooting of an unarmed man threatening to kill himself. The investigation was sparked by the killing of Aaron Campbell by Portland police, who were only on the scene after receiving a call that Campbell was a suicide risk.
• The frequent, unnecessary tasering of the mentally ill. According to the Times, “[t]he investigation singled out stun-gun use, saying officers frequently discharged them without justification or used them too many times on a given suspect.”
• Using a level of force disproportionate to a mentally ill suspect’s purported crime. The allegations of undue force against people suspected of low-level crimes bothered Portland Police Chief Mike Reese, who said “Fundamentally, we have to treat people in mental-health crisis with compassion and empathy. We can’t treat them the same way we do somebody that’s committed a bank robber.”

The four million Americans who suffer from “severe psychiatric disorders” have recently had their access to health care reduced as a consequence of state budget cuts, though the Affordable Care Act makes significant improvements.

Officer Patrick Tuter crashed his car into Michael Vincent Allen’s truck in Mesquite, TX yesterday after an extended attempt to chase down the latter. What happened directly after the stop, we’re not quite sure of, potentially because Mesquite PD deleted the photos detailing it. But we do know how the encounter ended — Allen is dead after Tuter discharged about 41 shots.

Mitchell Wallace and and his family witnessed the incident:

After Allen pulled into a driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac in an attempt to make a U-turn, his truck was pinned between two police cars with one of the police cars striking Allen’s truck from the front, said Wallace’s 17-year-old son, Cameron.

‘From the time they yelled, ‘Get out, get out,’ they didn’t give him three seconds to get out,’ Mitchell Wallace said, adding that he counted about 20 bullet holes in Allen’s truck.

Wallace and his wife were asleep when the gunshots began, but they quickly made it to the porch to see Allen’s passenger being pulled from the truck and a police dog jumping into the cab. The German shepherd bit Allen in the neck and jaw area and dragged him out of the truck and onto the pavement, Wallace said.

Police officers pulled the dog off, flipped Allen on his stomach and handcuffed him before checking his pulse. Autopsy results are pending on the cause of Allen’s death.

Wallace says his phone contained photographs documenting the events that were deleted by the police. He says Mesquite officials confiscated the phone for four days, without a warrant, after the evidence was already deleted. Officer Tuter has been placed on restricted duty and is currently the subject of both a criminal investigation by the Mesquite police as well as an internal investigation in Garland, TX, Tuter’s home department.

The police cannot legally delete photographic evidence of an arrest and cannot seize the photographs without a court order except in exceptional circumstances. The Washington, D.C. Police Department is currently facing a lawsuit over the seizure of photographic evidence of a police vehicle colliding with a motorcycle, though the D.C. police have updated their policies for the better since the incident. Similar allegations of photograph seizure have cropped up around the country despite a Department of Justice letter informing police departments that documenting the police is a Constitutional right.

A new report documents the tens of dozens of incidents of alleged police force against Occupy Wall Street protesters between September 2011 and July 2012. The report, conducted by law school clinics, investigates the New York Police Department’s response to the largely peaceful Occupy protests that took place in New York City.

Among the report’s findings were 130 incidents that “warrant investigation by authorities.” “When considered together, a complex mapping of protest suppression emerges,” the authors write. They find 97 times police allegedly used bodily force like striking, punching, shoving, grabbing, kicking, or dragging, and 41 documented cases of alleged weapon use like batons, barricades, horses, pepper spray:

The police response has thus, in some individual cases and considered cumulatively, undermined basic assembly and expression freedoms. At times, it has itself also presented a threat to the safety of New Yorkers.

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf singles out 14 of the most shocking allegations of NYPD abuse cited in the report.

Since the fall, there have been more than 2,000 arrests at Occupy Wall Street. Photographs of police using rubber bullets, pepper spray, and force at protests around the country gained widespread attention.

Last night, more than 600 protestors gathered around the Anaheim City Hall in California, following the death of two young men at the hands of police last weekend. Their deaths were at least the fifth officer-involved deaths so far this year, and the sixth officer-involved shooting in the city.

Protests started on Saturday, sparked by the death of Manuel Diaz, who police say was a known gang member. Police killed Diaz near an alley on Saturday after Diaz attempted to run away. According to the police, Diaz was not carrying a gun, and two officers were put on paid leave as a result of the killing. Then, on Sunday police shot and killed Matthew Acevedo following a brief car chase during which Acevedo shot at police.

The protests Tuesday were the fourth night of demonstrations against police brutality and misconduct. According to NBC Los Angeles, protestors gathered in front of City Hall at 4pm to “urge councilmembers to investigate those shootings and reform the city’s police force, which residents have accused of racial profiling.” After filling the council chamber, protestors clashed with police on the streets.

Watch a video of police clashing with protestors:

Police fired pepperballs and bean bag rounds at the protestors, who threw rocks and lawn chairs back at the officers. The Orange County district attorney’s office will lead an inquiry of the two police officers put on leave.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

The city of Chicago is preparing to pay out more than $5 million to former inmate Michael Tillman, one of 110 alleged African American victims of police torture under long-time police commander Jon Burge. Tillman spent more than two decades in prison for the 1986 rape and murder of a South Side woman, which he confessed to after detectives repeatedly beat him with a phone book, suffocated him with a typewriter cover, poured soda up his nose, threatened him with a gun, and burned him with a cigarette lighter.

The Finance Committee also called for a $1.8 million payment to David Fauntleroy, who was tortured into confessing to a 1983 murder that landed him a prison sentence of 25 years.

Though Chicago taxpayers have already paid nearly $44.9 million in settlements for these abuses, one of the central figures in the case, former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, will dodge orders to testify about his knowledge of the scandal. Tillman’s lawsuit claims Daley, who was state’s attorney at the time, knew Burge was torturing suspects and aided in a cover-up when he became mayor. Daley’s office flatly denies any knowledge of the torture.

Burge himself was already convicted in 2010 for lying about the practices and is serving 4 and a half years in prison.

Tillman recanted his forced confession after just a few days, but stayed locked up until attorneys brought evidence proving a systemic pattern of torture by Burge and his team of so-called “Asskickers,” along with a compelling case for Tillman’s innocence. Ultimately the Cook County Special Prosecutor was convinced to dismiss Tillman’s case in January 2010, and the Chief Judge issued him a judicial certificate of innocence.

On the 25th anniversary of Tillman’s arrest, a district court judge upheld Tillman’s claims against Daley, ruling that Daley could be held as a conspirator in the scheme to torture and cover-up. Though Daley won’t be deposed now that Tillman has agreed to settle the lawsuit, Tillman is hardly the end of the scandal; five other men still have pending torture lawsuits against the city and could still question Daley about his role in the abuse and cover-up.

Tillman and his attorneys have called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to publicly apologize on behalf of the city and its police department to all Burge torture victims and to Chicago’s African American community on Wednesday, when settlement is formally presented to him and the entire Chicago City Council for approval.