Robert Dotson, 52, was shot and killed in the doorway of his house in Farmington.

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.

  • Flying Squid
    6•1 year ago

    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.

    • ThunderingJerboa
      -2•1 year ago

      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.