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.
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…
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).
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
It’s well known in most countries that only hunters and cowards own guns, so are you saying we should disarm everyone bar the hunters?
i believe the police in their normal day to day operation do not need to be lethally armed.
they turn simple transactions into life threatening events with almost no benefit to the public.
this is a perfect example. if the police only had, say tasers and this guy comes walkin out with a gun. is he going to run? not possible. do you really think he would just start shooting a block full of police officers? no of course not.
but the cowardice is part of police training. shoot first, question later and be sure to empty the fucking clip.
I would love to see all the people asking to disarm police officers apply for the job once we do. But its so easy to make these claims from the safety of your house. Who cares about actual realistic solutions?
You idiots act like it isn’t the norm in nearly every other modern nation for cops not to have firearms at all times.
Never once, in my life, has the presence of a cop’s gun made me feel more safe. Literally the opposite. And I’m white.
UK police only carry a baton and pepper spray my dude. Last I checked, they weren’t hurting for recruitment.
UK has almost no privately owned guns. US has more guns than people and its gun laws are nuts.
UK leading by example then. But riddle me this, how often is a firearm needed for an officer doing their everyday duties? Traffic stops, patrols, responding to calls. How often is it explicitly needed to be actively carrying a loaded firearm to a inherently non violent situation before having assessed it? I honestly have no idea. Is the expectation in the US that you’ll just get straight up murdered for doing your job? Is that how you guys live?
That’s the gist of what they’re taught, yeah. It shouldn’t take much digging to find “training” videos that are essentially: cop walks up to man in parking lot, man pulls a knife and lunges at cop instantly. The moral? Everyone is ready to kill you.
How often do you need your seatbelt? Should you still wear it anyway? And there are situations when wearing a seatbelt can kill you where you would survive without it.
The idea is the same with cops. A properly trained cop carying a weapon all the time would be safer overall by being able to react to violent situations while not posing a threat in non-violent ones. The issue is how incredibly undertrained most US cops are.
And yes, if they are not sufficiently trained, they should not carry a gun period. Not in their car, not anywhere.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I did not realize that I will be reading a post of a person who is upset that additional innocent person was not shot dead.
Weird takeaway but okay? Jesus ever living fuck this place is turning into reddit fast. I’m very clearly saying it’s pathetic that they are failures at even being killers as well. They can’t even be the pieces of shit they want to be right. Not that I’m disappointed that they didn’t manage to kill her.
And you know that. But you just desperately wanted a moral high ground. So I guess clap yourself on the back my man.
must have been that White privilege I keep hearing about
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?
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.
