The family of a man fatally shot in New Mexico by police officers responding to the wrong house sued the department for wrongful death and other claims in federal court, according to a complaint filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico.
Robert Dotson, 52, was shot and killed in the doorway of his house in Farmington after local police officers opened fire after they said they saw he had a gun.
Police knocked on Dotson’s door at 11:30 p.m. on April 5, according to the complaint filed in court. Dotson grabbed his gun from the top of the refrigerator and went to open the front door. The complaint says “police vehicles were parked down the street and did not have their lights on.”
Three officers standing outside the door immediately opened fire, according to the complaint. Dotson was hit by 12 bullets. His wife, Kimberly, wearing just her robe, came down the stairs to find out what happened, the complaint says, and the officers fired an additional 19 bullets at her but missed.
New Mexico State Police issued a statement saying that Farmington police were responding to a domestic violence call but went to the wrong address.
Gun owners: if police can murder you for having a gun, you don’t have the right to have a gun.
I mean, evidence shows they’ll shoot you whether you’re armed or not, might as well be able to shoot back.
What can’t police murder you for?
Being white and male.
Edit: just want to add an /s I dropped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
I wouldn’t bet my life on that.
you’ll lose it anyways, so you might as well
Daniel Shaver would like a word.
You are completely right on that one. I had totally forgotten that incident.
As a rebuttal, I really should have put a /s for sarcasm. My comment was based on the disproportionate amount of these incidents happening to minorities and people of color.
And white
terroristerrr I mean kid, Kyle Rittenhouse…deleted by creator
The irony here is that the gun put him in danger instead of adding protection
Tell it to Russian protesters. Before they were drafted. Or poisoned. Or imprisoned. Or being shot on bridge near Kremlin. Or poisoned and then imprisoned. Or not protester, but 20-years old programmer who was beaten to death for jogging. Or woman who got force abortion by her stomach being kicked with reinforced boot.
Tell them what? Be specific so there is no misunderstanding.
That if they had guns they would be in more danger
They just needed a few good guys with guns walking down the street at the same time to help out.
They don’t even care about gun rights if you’re white and a Democrat. Look at how the NRA is not even saying a peep about Hunter Biden’s gun charge.
deleted by creator
They’re incompetent bullies with shit-for-brains.
Pretty happy shitty police here don’t carry firearms
Because there aren’t any consequences for them if they get it wrong.
No matter how badly they fuck up, by accident or on purpose, there are never any consequences. There’s absolutely no reason for a cop to not kill. Some states have a felony murder rule, which means that if you’re committing a felony you’re guilty of murder for every person the cops kill in response. Florida has it, so when someone robbed a jewelry store and the cops killed the robbers, the hostage and some bystanders they weren’t at all responsible for just killing everyone on the scene.
My theory: they dont… I’m pretty sure some of the time they know what they’re doing. They don’t care. They’re in it to cause people pain. There are thousands of videos to prove that. There’s videos of them just showing up to houses and claiming the neighbors made a complaint, and then breaking the peoples constitutional right and going in.
So at this point, I don’t buy it, but it helps give them an out, so they keep repeating it.
Wow, you are delusional. This isn’t to say cops don’t have big problems. They have major oversight problems but to suggest even though its not unfair to say some cops are sadistic but to imply they are serial murderers who will for funnies kick in a random ass door to shoot and kill everyone inside is a bit too absurd. They would at the very least need possible deniability since it will be discovered in discovery of the case.
Edit: The logical answer is the cops are given the incorrect address, its a game of literal telephones usually involving high intensity situations where people may not be easily understood or have the time to talk. If you ever worked for a call center, you would know call quality can be fucking garbage even at the best of times.
ACAB
There are literally videos of training that cops get that talk about the “amazing sex” after killing someone.
It’s not in any “official” training program, but an outside contractor who gives seminars that police departments pay for. (which sort of makes it official, just in an off books sort of way)
Yes, yes the warrior mindset training course, of seeing the common person as an enemy. One of the many problems I alluded to cops having. Again cops have many problems and realistically its partly because they are human. This typically isn’t a problem for many organizations, well it is but its more on an individual basis rather than collective unless you discount the higher ups and middle management (but that is its own can of worms), but back to my point its not a problem because the offending parties fucking get fired/charged for this shit. Cops for some reason help each other out and since they are the enforcement branch of the law, they get quite a bit of wiggle room, which is stupid. I just think its delusional to think cops are mass serial killers when realistically 10-27% of cops ever discharge their firearm in the line of duty outside of the range (in the US). Many cops are fucking dickheads but I just think that past user is a bit delusional. Again policing in the US has major problems but we can’t lose sight of the fucking facts that most cops have never fired their weapon and probably even fewer have actually killed someone (justly or not). We as the people just want the people who fuck up drastically to be punished, so ACAB is merely a statement of the criticizing the organization rather than all the individuals inside it.
Not all of them are serial killers, but there are definitely serial killers on police forces, and they’re almost never arrested for it.
The other cops protect them. They might even join in on a racist beating or two, or they might look away and keep quiet to protect that thin blue line, either way, they’re all bad apples. Because that’s what happens when you leave one bad apple in with the rest, they all go rotten.
I, for one, don’t want “bad guys” to be murdered out of hand. I don’t think the police should have that power, I don’t think the government should have the power to kill its citizens at all.
Police officers should be required to live in the neighborhoods they patrol, and should have third party oversight boards with the power to charge police, and only police, with crimes.
I, for one, don’t want “bad guys” to be murdered out of hand. I don’t think the police should have that power, I don’t think the government should have the power to kill its citizens at all.
I agree with most of what you said but I disagree here. Like I would love for it to be easy to subdue “bad guys” but taking down someone non lethally and without any other major risk factors involved while subduing them is a bit unrealistic, primarily when they are armed(either with a firearm or any other kind of weapon). I want to see every “bad guy”(or man who isn’t even involved) see their day in court but we don’t live in a fantasy land where you can knock someone out without any ill effects like in the movies. Like many of us are talking behind a screen, there is a major problem with cop training and I 100% support them having to train far more but we have to keep in mind death can come in a fraction of a second and people are going to be on edge because of that. Again I already brought up my problems with the warrior training since they do heavily focus on this aspect and its way too focused on, they seriously see footage of cops hesitating and getting killed, so they program cops to always be afraid of every interaction but I just don’t think we should completely discount death can come in a mere moment. In America, there are literally more guns than fucking people here and that is part of the problem.
That attitude of “sometimes they have to” is the reason why there are serial killers on police forces in the US.
There are literal gangs in the LA SD. They have tattoos based on how many people they’ve killed, and they get away with that shit because “sometimes they ‘have to’” .
So no. If you kill someone as a cop, that’s it. You’re no longer a cop.
If it was actually justified, you get counseling and job training for something else, or maybe an early retirement in rare cases. If it wasn’t, then you go to prison for murder.
Also, don’t arm the regular cops. If you need a gun, you can check one out, or get it out of your patrol car’s locked compartment.
Cops should be given zero trust in this, because they’ve always instantly abused that trust.
the offending parties fucking get fired/charged for this shit.
They absolutely do not most of the time. They usually get put on paid leave, the police union circles the wagons around them, and if there is an inquiry, they get let off.
This typically isn’t a problem for many organizations, well it is but its more on an individual basis rather than collective unless you discount the higher ups and middle management (but that is its own can of worms), but back to my point its not a problem because the offending parties fucking get fired/charged for this shit.
I think you are missing my point. My point I will say was rambly so I will give you that, but it was saying people who aren’t cops typically suffer consequences for their actions ie you cuss at a customer, you will likely be fired even when you are probably in the right. So I agree with you. The is the problem with cops in the US, almost 0 oversight.
Did you miss the fact that they shot at his wife 19 times too? That would have solved the domestic dispute, I guess.
Its not great but I will say its hard to say if they were really aiming at her or they just sort of continued to mag dump on the husband. The Glock 22 is the most common pistol for law enforcement. Standard mag capacity for one is about 15 bullets. There are 3 officers so 45 bullets in total assuming these aren’t reduced size magazines and if they were you might see 10 round mags with one of their pistols already having a bullet in the chamber which would total about 31 shots. Which by looks of the total shot count, which makes me believe this may the case.
Edit: Without body cam footage, its hard to say what truly transpired but I don’t think its hard to believe a person who was in the general direction where the bullets were landing will say she was being fired upon but she may not have been target. The complaint was written in this way but at the end of the day it is a story that is based on memory, human memory is a very unreliable narrator. I can’t fault her if she didn’t remember all the details properly since she did go through a rather traumatic event in many ways. Don’t take this as me saying the cops are in the right since no, they fucked up super hard. An innocent man is dead, a woman is husbandless, and their children are fatherless. There are so many ways they likely fucked this up. Hell she may even be right about every single detail but at this stage, we just don’t know the full story. Its just 2 different statement without any extra evidence to back it up until body cam footage gets released, which will likely be seen via discovery in the lawsuit.
But the footage is there, that is likely why the reporting on this has been so much less “speculative”…
But if they got the right address and shot the shit out of whoever was there, then it would be A OK? The wrong address is just the incompetence cherry on top of this story.
I mean what is worse? Someone who has nothing to do with this dying horrible to a person who is possibly involved in domestic dispute possibly getting shot to shit. Which isn’t good but at least one has some degree of correlation between what sparked the event than it being a pointless endeavor. Again part of the problem is how abundant guns are in this country. You have a right to bear your arms as the constitution says but the reality is if a fucking cops has a scent of a gun on your ass, chances are the encounter isn’t going to end well for the citizen. I’m not saying its right but it is the reality of the situation. So no it isn’t okay but having a completely non involved party die makes this 10x worse.
Someone who has nothing to do with this dying horrible to a person who is possibly involved in domestic dispute possibly getting shot to shit.
Did you miss the fact that they shot at his wife 19 times too? That would have solved the domestic dispute, I guess.
They also shot at the wife, 19 times. In what domestic dispute situation would killing both parties be considered not a colossal failure?
One person who didn’t do anything wrong is dead, a bunch of other people who didn’t do anything wrong are gonna pay for it, and the people who killed an innocent person because they are violent and incompetent will face no sanctions whatsoever. The police are a fucking street gang.
One person who didn’t do anything wrong is dead, a bunch of other people who didn’t do anything wrong are gonna pay for it, and the people who killed an innocent person because they are violent and incompetent will face no sanctions whatsoever.
America, Fuck Yeah!
They’re far more powerful than a street gang. Street gangs are generally universally loathed by the general public and the courts are reasonably happy to lock up gangsters (though do tend to turn a blind eye when gang violence is self contained).
By comparison, the police have this significant chunk of the population bizarrely supporting them (“back the blue” and “thin Blue line”), a massive amount of media propaganda (it feels like every other show on TV is a cop drama), and the courts are heavily on their side (regularly refusing to even bring cases against the police).
I’ve never seen street gangs have any of those things. Even when there’s media about gangs, it usually doesn’t shy away from being clear that the gangs are evil.
So if they thought they killed a man committing domestic abuse, why hand cuff his victims and take them away like criminals. Police statements should never be believed, they’re always lying
This is why police need to be required by law to have occupational insurance.
That way even if they are found to be not guilty through qualified immunity or whatever BS, no insurance company would insure them, which means they couldn’t work as a cop anywhere.
Not having police means you get strongman groups that fill in as the security detail against getting raped and all that nonsense that humans do to each other. In short, you get the Taliban. And become Afghanistan.
Or Yemen, where everyone just has guns and everything goes to the dogs.
Who (besides you) said anything about not having police?
Oops, I’m an idiot. I thought the commenter above wanted all cops to have insurance, which no one would give them, so we’d live in a society without any form of law enforcement. Perhaps it’s time for bed.
IMO most police are insurable, but if all police are uninsurable because they randomly Derek Chauvin people, then maybe we do need a completely different system of law enforcement.
Or
YemenAmerica, where everyone just has guns and everything goes to the dogs.FTFY
Domestic violence? Let’s shoot at the wife too - no more domestics, no more violence.
Can’t abuse someone if they’re dead taps forehead
So they’re all getting life in prison for murder, breaking and entering, and attempted murder, right?
Right???
Paid leave for a month.
They need to stop calling this shit wrongful death and start calling it Murder. This was a straight up murder whether they were at the wrong house or not. End qualified immunity
and the officers fired an additional 19 bullets at her but missed.
Were these officers trained at Imperial Stormtrooper school?
Were these officers trained
No they were not
Oh no, they definitely were. Just not the way they should have been.
May as well be, they get trained on “killology”
It’s evil.
Yeah, I linked to an article about that in response to someone else. Absolutely agreed.
“His wife, Kimberly, wearing just her robe, came down the stairs to find out what happened, the complaint says, and the officers fired an additional 19 bullets at her but missed.”
Ok, so they give the reason for murdering her husband as being armed (not a crime in the US I think), whats the rational here? If not for the stormtrooper level shooting those kids would be orphans. Or maybe they would shoot them as well?
They were frightened for their safety.
If only people were allowed to knock on the homes of cops, then shoot them and their wife because the cop came to the door with a gun.
Wish they would use that line of thinking to stay home instead.
Land of the removed.
Home of the (thankfully) awful shots
Family of man MURDERED by police… there I fixed your title
Used to live in Chaves county for many years. Law enforcement there is even worse than the rest of what you hear in the country for a few reasons. Roswell PD for example would pay for your police training, so these guys and gals would get a free ride to FLETC as long as they were going to join RPD.
However, most of the time they would graduate, start working in Roswell and immediately realize how shitty the town and corruption within RPD was and transfer to another office, usually out of state. It became an issue for a long time where people would just get the free FLETC ride and go off elsewhere, making local PD was so thin that State Police as well as the Sheriff’s Department were having to help out with mundane calls well below their pay grade.
So this causes the other issue, the only cops there consistently are the douchefucks that peaked in high school (and peek at high schoolers, both a joke and the reality, see Cass Mason of Hagerman, NM PD) who have an ego and power fantasy. They have room temperature IQ and AR15s in the back seat. I’m sure Farmington is no different with their police academy candidates.
So this story didn’t surprise me when it happened, sadly. Hope the family gets what they deserve from these shitty cops.
I can’t believe the sense of entitlement among average people. Do they really believe they’re entitled to feel safe in their own homes!
/S
Not to dismiss what happened here. But who is still opening their door when random strangers bang on it?
Yes, because I’m sure the cops just went away when he didn’t answer the first ten times they pounded on it like they were trying to break it down. Cops have a terrifying way of “knocking.”
Cops have a terrifying way of “knocking.”
It’s supposed to be, it’s psychological. But you are not legally obligated to open it. If they have a good enough reason to be there, they will let themselves in. Otherwise keep your mouth shut, the lights off, and out of sight so you don’t give them that reason; and they can fuck off.
