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The wife of an armed New Mexico homeowner whom police officers fatally shot when they went to the wrong house on a domestic violence call said she was treated like a suspect, detained for hours and given few details about why officers gunned down her husband.

Months later, the Farmington Police Department still hasn’t reached out to Kim Dotson or her family since police killed Robert Dotson, 52, on April 5, she said.

She said in an interview Wednesday that she learned the officers had knocked on the wrong door that night only because her son is a police officer in the area and was able to read the dispatch log.

“I feel helpless the way all of this has happened,” said Dotson, 49, a former trauma nurse, who said she quit the profession after she tended to her husband when he was shot multiple times in the doorway of their home.

“I don’t understand how these guys get to go home to their families and they broke apart our family,” she said.

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Unaware that it was police officers who had opened fire, Dotson said, she returned fire — and the officers shot 19 more times into her home, according to a civil rights suit her family filed in federal district court Friday.

She was uninjured and hasn’t faced charges. …

  • BigCow@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I really don’t understand the complacency that exists in America for this kind of behavior. Police are trained to have a license to kill, every other profession this big of a duck up and your license would be revoked. I do also have empathy for Police because they are really good at their job to police(you know busting down doors shooting bad guys)…but that’s not all they are responsible for and they get sloppy at their job. Traffic violations should be handled by department of transportation. Someone who is in need of help due to drugs or being in manic state should have mental health professional and/or medical response…I could go on. Also look at all the other countries in the world who are still able to police their population without decking out their officers with a full arsenal.