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

News

21860 readers
4658 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.


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
 

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] charles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 93 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Gun owners: if police can murder you for having a gun, you don't have the right to have a gun.

[–] NotBillMurray@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago

I mean, evidence shows they'll shoot you whether you're armed or not, might as well be able to shoot back.

[–] seathru@lemm.ee 23 points 10 months ago (7 children)

What can't police murder you for?

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The irony here is that the gun put him in danger instead of adding protection

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

They just needed a few good guys with guns walking down the street at the same time to help out.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 58 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

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!

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 55 points 10 months ago

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

[–] Brawndo@kbin.social 46 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 42 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Domestic violence? Let's shoot at the wife too - no more domestics, no more violence.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone 42 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

So they’re all getting life in prison for murder, breaking and entering, and attempted murder, right?

Right???

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

Paid leave for a month.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 39 points 10 months ago (2 children)

and the officers fired an additional 19 bullets at her but missed.

Were these officers trained at Imperial Stormtrooper school?

[–] Noodle07@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Were these officers trained

No they were not

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Oh no, they definitely were. Just not the way they should have been.

[–] reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

May as well be, they get trained on "killology"

It's evil.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I linked to an article about that in response to someone else. Absolutely agreed.

[–] cristo@lemmy.world 39 points 10 months ago

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

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 34 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"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?

[–] IamSparticles@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They were frightened for their safety.

[–] kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] gascown@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] TheMightyCanuck@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago

Home of the (thankfully) awful shots

[–] binarybomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 10 months ago

Family of man MURDERED by police.. there I fixed your title

[–] BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

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

load more comments
view more: next ›