New Mexico Cops Fatally Shoot Homeowner After Showing Up at the Wrong House

Published

2 years ago

April 10, 2023

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Police in Farmington, New Mexico, fatally shot a man while responding to a domestic disturbance call at the wrong house. The man killed lived across the street from the house police had been called to.

“On April 5, 2023, at around 11:30 p.m., the Farmington Police Department received a call for a domestic violence incident occurring at 5308 Valley View Avenue,” according to the New Mexico State Police Investigations Bureau, which is now investigating the incident. “Once on scene, officers mistakenly approached 5305 Valley View Avenue instead of 5308 Valley View Avenue.” Police knocked on the (wrong) door, no one answered, and “officers asked their dispatch to call the reporting party back and have them come to the front door.”

As they started to leave, 52-year-old homeowner Robert Dotson opened his front door holding a handgunnot an entirely unreasonable thing for someone to do when they get a strange knock on their door late at night.

No one alleges that Dotson pointed the gun at the police officers or threatened them.

Nonetheless, “at this point in the encounter, officer(s) fired at least one round from their duty weapon(s) striking Mr. Dotson,” the state police report. The Farmington officers did not even tell the man who answered the door to drop his weapon nor give him time to comply with their order before firing upon him, according to the statement from state police.

This would be an insane overreaction even if the police had been at the right house. That police weren’t even at the right house of course makes the shooting all the more senseless.

Dotson was pronounced dead at the scene.

“Mr. Dotson was not the subject of the call that our officers were responding to, and this ending is just unbelievably tragic,” Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said in a video posted to Facebook. “I’m extremely sorry that we’re in this position. We’ll find more facts as we go through the investigation.”

Police say they will release body camera footage of the incident within a week.

People claiming to know Dotson reacted in disbelief and anger to Hebbe’s Facebook announcement. “This was a good man. He had two kids in the home he was protecting. I hope they all are fired,” posted RJ Brown. Another commenter responded, “Fired? They need prison time. No mercy.”

“What a terrible loss to our community,” posted Gregg Tradup. ” He was a good man who worked hard to provide for his family and was a genuine great guy. All he was doing was what anyone of us would do when someone knocks on our door at that time of night.”
FREE MINDS

Los Angeles sues journalist over photos of police officers. In response to a public records request from journalist Ben Camacho, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) sent Camacho photos of undercover officers. Camacho gave the images to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which published them on its website. Butwhoops!the LAPD now says it didn’t mean to send the photos. So the city is suing Camacho and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition to get them back. “The City seeks the return of these inadvertently produced photos to protect the lives and work of these undercover officers,” city lawyers wrote.

“Susan Seager, an attorney for Camacho, said in a written statement that her client ‘will fight the City’s effort to censor his journalism about police, which is a matter of paramount concern,'” reports the Los Angeles Times: Legal experts uniformly rejected the lawsuit as baseless and ripe for dismissal under the 1st Amendment and other well-established legal protections for journalists.

“This is a Hail Mary, desperation play by the city,” said David Loy, legal director of the California First Amendment Coalition.

“The city is on very weak legal grounds,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

“This isn’t even a close call,” said Ken Paulson, former editor in chief of USA Today and now director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

More here. FREE MARKETS

IRS releases plans for $80 billion funding windfall. The IRS has released a plan for what it will do with the influx of cash it’s getting as part of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. Joe Bishop-Henchman, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, analyzes the plan in this Twitter thread, noting that it gives much more money to the IRS’ enforcement arm than to taxpayer services and that it’s short on specifics about how it will achieve a lot of taxpayer services goals. Taxpayer services may be goal 1 and 2 but only gets a few billion dollars; enforcement gets $45 billion pic.twitter.com/eaDpTYKdDK

— Joe Bishop-Henchman (@jbhenchman) April 6, 2023

“The $80 billion is the largest single infusion of funds in the agency’s history and was included in the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping climate and energy legislation that Democrats pushed through last year,” notes The New York Times.

“The I.R.S. plan repeatedly emphasizes that it will honor [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen’s directive that the new money not be aimed at increasing audit rates for taxpayers who earn less than $400,000 a year,” the Times points out. “The plan echoes Ms. Yellen’s assurance that those audit rates will not rise above ‘historical levels,’ but does not specify the levels, suggesting that audit rates could rise above their existing levels.” QUICK HITS

The Treasury Department is trying to lay the groundwork for greater regulation of cryptocurrency by citing concerns about (what else?) national security. A new report “sketches out how the Treasury Department plans to bring the market under greater federal oversight, suggesting that platforms that fail to establish sufficient vetting policies risk enforcement action,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t intervene to immediately stop a 12-year-old transgender girl in West Virginia from competing as part of the girl’s track team at her middle school. The girl’s “case was the Supreme Court’s first examination of restrictions on transgender athletes, and it came on an emergency application from the state,” notes The Washington Post. The decision not to get involved leaves intact a lower court’s order pausing enforcement of a state law defining eligibility for sex-specific sports teams to “be based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is introducing a new social media app in the United States. Called Lemon8, it’s “a photo-based app that resembles a mixture of Instagram and Pinterest, and is sprinkled with videos that look like the ones posted on TikTok,” notes the Associated Press.

Members of a federal board in charge of reviewing exterior changes to homes and businesses in D.C.’s Georgetown Historic District “unanimously voted Thursday to deny a Georgetown University neuroscientist’s request to keep a pair of massive Transformers sculptures posted outside his historic rowhouse in the neighborhood.”

UK

Starmer survives rebellion as watered-down welfare cuts pass key vote

Published

44 mins ago

July 2, 2025

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Starmer survives rebellion as watered-down welfare cuts pass key vote

Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial welfare bill has passed its first hurdle in the Commons despite a sizeable rebellion from his MPs.

The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5.5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 on Tuesday evening.

A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.

Politics latest: Chancellor left in ‘impossible situation’ after PM survives welfare rebellion

After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.

They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the bill voted through “is not expected to deliver any savings over the next four years” because the savings from reducing the Universal Credit health element for new claimants will be roughly offset by the cost of increasing the UC standard allowance.

Just 90 minutes before voting started on Tuesday evening, disabilities minister Stephen Timms announced the last of a series of concessions made as dozens of Labour MPs spoke of their fears for disabled and sick people if the bill was made law.

How did your MP vote on Labour’s welfare bill?

In a major U-turn, he said changes in eligibility for the personal independence payment (PIP), the main disability payment to help pay for extra costs incurred, would not take place until a review he is carrying out into the benefit is published in autumn 2026.

An amendment brought by Labour MP Rachael Maskell, which aimed to prevent the bill progressing to the next stage, was defeated but 44 Labour MPs voted for it.

A Number 10 source told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby: “Change isn’t easy, we’ve always known that, we’re determined to deliver on the mandate the country gave us, to make Britain work for hardworking people.

“We accept the will of the house, and want to take colleagues with us, our destination – a social security system that supports the most vulnerable, and enables people to thrive – remains.”

But the Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride called the vote “farcical” and said the government “ended up in this terrible situation” because they “rushed it”.

He warned the markets “will have noticed that when it comes to taking tougher decisions about controlling and spending, this government has been found wanting”.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said: “I wish we’d got to this point in a different way. And there are absolutely lessons to learn.

“But I think it’s really important we pass this bill at the second reading, it put some really important reforms to the welfare system – tackling work disincentives, making sure that people with severe conditions would no longer be assessed and alongside our investment in employment support this will help people get back to work, because that’s the brighter future for them.”

She made further concessions on Monday in the hope the rebels’ fears would be allayed, but many were concerned the PIP eligibility was going to be changed at the same time the review was published, meaning its findings would not be taken into account.

Her changes were:

• Current PIP claimants, and any up to November 2026, would have the same eligibility criteria as they do now, instead of the stricter measure proposed

• A consultation into PIP to be “co-produced” with disabled people and published in autumn 2026

• For existing and future Universal Credit (UC) claimants, the combined value of the standard UC allowance and the health top-up will rise “at least in line with inflation” every year for the rest of this parliament

• The UC health top-up, for people with limited ability to work due to a disability or long-term sickness, will get a £300m boost next year – doubling the current amount – then rising to £800m the year after and £1bn in 2028/29.

World

Women’s Euros: Extreme heat warnings in place as tournament kicks off

Published

2 hours ago

July 1, 2025

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Women's Euros: Extreme heat warnings in place as tournament kicks off

The Women’s Euros begin in Switzerland today – with extreme heat warnings in place.

Security measures have had to be relaxed by UEFA for the opening matches so fans can bring in water bottles.

Temperatures could be about 30C (86F) when the Swiss hosts open their campaign against Norway in Basel this evening.

Players have already seen the impact of heatwaves this summer at the men’s Club World Cup in the US.

It is raising new concerns in the global players’ union about whether the stars of the sport are being protected in hot and humid conditions.

FIFPRO has asked FIFA to allow cooling breaks every 15 minutes rather than just in the 30th minute of each half.

There’s also a request for half-time to be extended from 15 to 20 minutes to help lower the core temperature of players.

FIFPRO’s medical director, Dr Vincent Gouttebarge, said: “There are some very challenging weather conditions that we anticipated a couple of weeks ago already, that was already communicated to FIFA.

“And I think the past few weeks were confirmation of all worries that the heat conditions will play a negative role for the performance and the health of the players.”

Football has seemed focused on players and fans baking in the Middle East – but scorching summers in Europe and the US are becoming increasingly problematic for sport.

While climate change is a factor, the issue is not new and at the 1994 World Cup, players were steaming as temperatures rose in the US.

There is now more awareness of the need for mitigation measures among players and their international union.

FIFPRO feels football officials weren’t responsive when it asked for kick-off times to be moved from the fierce afternoon heat in the US for the first 32-team Club World Cup.

FIFA has to balance the needs of fans and broadcasters with welfare, with no desire to load all the matches in the same evening time slots.

Electric storms have also seen six games stopped, including a two-hour pause during a Chelsea game at the weekend.

This is the dress rehearsal for the World Cup next summer, which is mostly in the US.

The use of more indoor, air conditioned stadiums should help.

There is no prospect of moving the World Cup to winter, as Qatar had to do in 2022.

And looking further ahead to this time in 2030, there will be World Cup matches in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. The temperatures this week have been hitting 40C (104F) in some host cities.

FIFA said in a statement to Sky News: “Heat conditions are a serious topic that affect football globally.

“At the FCWC some significant and progressive measures are being taken to protect the players from the heat. For instance, cooling breaks were implemented in 31 out of 54 matches so far.

“Discussions on how to deal with heat conditions need to take place collectively and FIFA stands ready to facilitate this dialogue, including through the Task Force on Player Welfare, and to receive constructive input from all stakeholders on how to further enhance heat management.

“In all of this, the protection of players must be at the centre.”