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.
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.