Authorities in New Mexico will not seek charges against three police officers involved in a fatal shooting after arriving at the wrong house last year.
Officers in the town of Farmington fired dozens of shots and killed Robert Dotson, 52, because he appeared at the door of his home holding a gun.
At the time, the officers were responding to a domestic violence call from a house across the street.
The Dotson family filed a lawsuit against the department last year.
According to a complaint filed by the family in court, police arrived at the Dotson residence late on 5 April, 2023 and “parked down the street and did not have their lights on”.
When Mr Dotson opened his front door holding a weapon, police immediately opened fire, striking him 12 times. Another 19 shots were fired at his wife Kimberly, who was unharmed during the incident. Police later said she opened fire on officers with a pistol.
disarm the police. they do not need to be armed their entire shifts. if they approached this house without lethal weapons, how many people would be dead right now?
zero. the answer is zero.
do not let cowards have lethal armament
Police should have access to weapons, but they should be locked in the car and require remote unlock when they actually need them.
Or maybe leave them to trained professionals they can call for support.
That might work in cities with a reasonable response time.
Or maybe just fucking train them. 6 months is supposed to be enough? You need more than that to cut someone’s fucking hair.
The problem is they attend conferences that brainwash them into thinking that every person they interact with is seconds away from pulling a machine gun out of their pocket and mowing them all down. To make things worse, their word is also treated as gospel by a large portion of the population so generic terms like “I feared for my safety” (along with qualified immunity) is all they need to avoid any sort of accountability.
the police training in the united states is a complete disaster.
theres no standardization, no requirement for any kind of conformity. you have random contractors and “state schools” teaching officers that every interaction with anyone, ever is a threat to their life. seriously.
they actively reject ‘students’ who question questionable practices. they reject people who test ‘too intelligent’.
the entire system is designed to attract, and keep the worst kind of people.
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If the police are allowed to kill you simply for possessing a gun, you do not have a right to bare arms. They have violated your civil rights.
bare arms
Those aren’t the type of guns we’re talking about…
Hah, I’ll leave it.
💪
Did the wrong thing to arrive on a good thing then.
Killing someone for owning a gun is a good thing? Jesus fucking Christ.
You don’t get killed for “simply possessing a gun”, you get killed for brandishing one in front of police.
Having a gun on your person while opening the door is not brandishing. Also, there are countless other examples of people getting shot by the police simply for possessing a weapon.
There is also zero reason to believe that this man was aware the people at his house were police.
Having a gun on your person while opening the door is not brandishing.
Yes it is.
there are countless other examples of people getting shot by the police simply for possessing a weapon.
I’m referring to the incident in the OP.
There is also zero reason to believe that this man was aware the people at his house were police.
I mean there’s 1 reason: they were police. If the man failed to investigate before opening the door while brandishing a firearm, that’s on him.
But as I’ve already stated, it doesn’t matter if he knew or not, really.
You should look up the definition of brandishing because you are incorrect.
Who the fuck “investigates” before opening their door? Basically nobody aside from looking out a peephole.
You should look up the definition of brandishing because you are incorrect.
Who the fuck “investigates” before opening their door?
Any sensible person, but especially people who open doors WITH FUCKING GUNS IN THEIR FUCKING HANDS.
Having a gun in your hand is not brandishing. You have to wave or aim it in a threatening manner for it to be brandishing.
You do not have to wave or aim it in a threatening manner for it to be brandishing. It doesn’t even have to be in your hand. Stop looking up legal definitions on Merriam Webster.
The term “brandish” means, with respect to a firearm, to display all or part of the firearm, or otherwise make the presence of the firearm known to another person, in order to intimidate that person, regardless of whether the firearm is directly visible to that person. 18 U.S.C. § 924©(4).
pizza delivery guys fuck this up far less and show a higher degree of care and professionalism, while not having guns and power to hide behind
It’s fucked up the pizza delivery people are more professional than cops but here we are. It’s sadly a more dangerous job than being a police officer, too. At least, on average.
Police are so inept that they had to create special protections to shield them from being held accountable for their actions legally.
No one created those though. The supreme court just made them up. It’s the same thing you’ve been seeing in these recent discounted trans lawsuits. Despite the constitution explicitly being amended to allow it, the supreme court literally has said “oh, you cant sue states for civil rights violations. You’ve just got no recourse there. Good luck!”
They apparently were supposed to be responding the domestic dispute but not only did they shoot him 12 fucking times they fired 19 bullets at the supposed victim?
Why the fuck are they not being charged again?
They just straight up murder people now with consequences. And like other’s have said if they can shoot you for having a gun then we have no right to bare arms and they violent the second amendment.
They took 19 shots at the wife and didn’t hit her? Not only are these people disgusting but they can’t even do this part of the job fucking right.
I can do you better. There was a high profile police, er, “shooting” in my town back in the early 2000’s that made front page in the papers because four cops fired 204 shots at some guys – for those keeping score at home, that’s four Barney Fifes with three complete magazines, two reloads each out of their issued Glock 17’s – and hit no one.
So they succeeded in doing nothing but putting holes in a bunch of people’s cars, a couple of rowhouses, lampposts, mailboxes, etc., and failed to even so much as wing any of the multiple alleged perps. I mean, they didn’t manage to nail any innocent bystanders or people sleeping in their beds or anything for once, either. Ludicrous levels of wanton and irresponsible property damage and potential injury or death dealt to anyone within a radius of who knows how many blocks, not a single care given, for no benefit whatsoever. You know, just business as usual.
To this day I wonder if there actually were any perps, or if some cops just decided they wanted to shoot up a poor inner city neighborhood for yuks and get away with it.
Something similar happened in NYC except the cops hit a ton of bystanders and then charged the suspect for it as if he’d done it himself.
We have stormtroopers, but at least stormtroopers look cool or something?
There’s a fan theory that they were ordered to miss, at least to miss Luke and Leia.
I’d say it’s more than a theory. We’re told that “only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise” and Vader put a tracking device on the Falcon (seizing the moment when his interrogation wasn’t getting results) so it was imperative that the intruders get away. That’s just reading between the lines.
Later Star Wars media missed the memo and had them suck. Probably because blaster bolts look and sound cool and you get to have more of them if they miss a lot.
They fly now??
Ugh, sorry
She fired at them. Those were retreating shots.
A more reasonable use for a firearm has never been stated. Random people roll up to your house and murder your husband. Clearest case of self defense there has ever been.
I’ve been woken up in the middle of the night by angry police who showed up at the wrong house and it’s fucking terrifying, but it’s a really bad idea to ever answer your door with a gun in your hand. If you feel like you need a gun to open your door you shouldn’t be opening the door.
Not opening the door wouldn’t save you. There was a no-knock warrant where a man was woken up when the police had kicked in his door and shined a light in his face. He had a gun next to his bed (I can’t remember if he was even holding it). He had been awake something like less than 8 seconds before the cops shot him because they saw the gun.
Sleeping next to a gun sounds like a bad idea too. Unless you’re being hunted by assassins or something along those lines. Not that it’s that guys fault, because reaching for a weapon when you are startled awake is a completely natural response, but just from a safety perspective that feels like a really terrible place to keep a gun.
Just depends on the setting.
Small kids at home? Yeah that’s dumb AF.
Living alone? Who cares where it is, but concealing/securing it would help prevent it from being stolen if your house is broken into.
Not opening the door wouldn’t save you.
Maybe not but your chances are a whole lot better…
Ah I think I saw the body cam footage on that one, quite sobering to see.
I won’t open the door anyway. The cops have no legitimate reason to be banging on my door, ever, so they can go pack sand. The only two possible reasons for doing so are a wrong address or deliberate fuckery on their part. So I’d rather let them come to me. Preferably to the 3rd story bedroom, the one up the rickety narrow stairs. (Yay for 1920’s redneck architecture. For once.)
Despite all the yelling and threats and bluster they’ll inevitably do, if they ain’t got a warrant you are not obligated to let them in or even acknowledge their presence. Fuck 'em.
Republicans told me it was Legal to have a Gun in your house and also that we need to Defund Schools to give money to Cops?
Cops in the States do cops in the states things. I’m so tired.
Yeah but, yeah but see, see though the thing is though, but see he was white this time. So. Y’know. Might make the news. Oh, wait it did.
Member that time they found all those unmarked graves of people reported missing behind the Jackson Mississippi police station? Member that? Got less coverage than the Star Wars Holiday Special.
but see he was white this time. So. Y’know. Might make the news. Oh, wait it did.
LOL yes because minorities shot by the cops never make the news. 🤦♂️
Because not long ago they didn’t.
“Not long ago”? Like 40 years ago?
Rodney King ring a bell?
Did you read about every one of the 229 Black people (ranging in age from 3 months to 88 yrs old) killed by police in the year after George Floyd’s murder? Or every one of the 27% of police killings that involved Black people in 2021? Or every one of the 2164 Black people killed by the police since 2015?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Of course I didn’t read about all of them. But I did read about several of them, on a regular basis.
How many white people did you read about being murdered by cops? Yeah, didn’t think so.
White people being killed by police has always been noted. Indigenous, Black and Brown people not so much.
If you’re gonna open a door with a gun in your hand while either not knowing who is on the other side, or knowing that it’s cops, you get no sympathy from me. That’s incredibly irresponsible.
In a country full of completely unjustified police shootings, this just takes away from real tragedies.
must have been that White privilege I keep hearing about
