489
submitted 1 year ago by deconstruct@lemm.ee to c/news@lemmy.world

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social -3 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

They also shot at the wife, 19 times. In what domestic dispute situation would killing both parties be considered not a colossal failure?

this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
489 points (98.8% liked)

News

23260 readers
3389 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS