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.”
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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.”
Pressure is growing to renegotiate or leave an international convention blamed for slowing building projects and increasing costs after a judge warned campaigners they are in danger of “the misuse of judicial review”.
Under the Aarhus Convention, campaigners who challenge projects on environmental grounds but then lose in court against housing and big infrastructure have their costs above £10,000 capped and the rest met by the taxpayer.
Government figures say this situation is “mad” but ministers have not acted, despite promising to do so for months.
The Tories are today leading the call for change with a demand to reform or leave the convention.
In March, Sky News revealed how a computer scientist from Norfolk had challenged a carbon capture and storage project attached to a gas-fired power station on multiple occasions.
Andrew Boswell took his challenge all the way the appeal court, causing delays of months at a cost of over £100m to the developers.
In May, the verdict handed down by the Court of Appeal was scathing about Dr Boswell’s case.
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“Dr Boswell’s approach is, we think, a classic example of the misuse of judicial review in order to continue a campaign against a development… once a party has lost the argument on the planning merits,” wrote the judges.
They added: “Such an approach is inimical to the scheme enacted by parliament for the taking of decisions in the public interest,” adding his case “betrays a serious misunderstanding of the decision of the Supreme Court” and “the appeal must therefore be rejected”.
Another case – against a housing development in a series of fields in Cranbrook, Kent – was thrown out by judges in recent weeks.
The case was brought by CPRE Kent, the countryside challenge, to preserve a set of fields between two housing developments alongside an area of outstanding natural beauty.
John Wotton, from CPRE Kent, suggested it would have been hard to bring the challenge without the costs being capped.
“We would’ve had to think very carefully about whether we could impose that financial risk on the charity,” he told Sky News.
After his case was dismissed, Berkeley Homes said the situation was “clearly absurd and highlights how incredibly slow and uncertain our regulatory system has become”.
They added: “We welcome the government’s commitment to tackle the blockages which stop businesses from investing and frustrate the delivery of much needed homes, jobs and growth.
“We need to make the current system work properly so that homes can actually get built instead of being tied-up in bureaucracy by any individual or organisation who wants to stop them against the will of the government.”
‘Reform could breach international law’
Around 80 cases a year are brought under the Aarhus Convention, Sky News has learned.
The way Britain interprets Aarhus is unique as a result of the UK’s distinctive legal system and the loser pays principle.
Barrister Nick Grant, a planning and environment expert who has represented government and campaigns, said the convention means more legally adventurous claims.
“What you might end up doing is bringing a claim on more adventurous grounds, additional grounds, running points – feeling comfortable running points – that you might not have otherwise run.
“So it’s both people bringing claims, but also how they bring the claims, and what points they run. This cap facilitates it basically.”
However, Mr Grant said that it would be difficult to reform: “Fundamentally, the convention is doing what it was designed to do, which is to facilitate access to justice.
“And it then becomes a question for the policymakers as to what effect is this having and do we want to maintain that? It will be difficult for us to reform it internally without being in breach of our international law obligations”
In March, Sky News was told Number 10 is actively looking at the convention.
Multiple figures in government have said the situation with Britain’s participation in the Aarhus Convention is “mad” but Sky News understands nothing of significance is coming on this subject.
Image: ‘The country faces a choice,’ says Robert Jenrick
The Tories, however, want action.
Robert Jenrick, shadow justice secretary and former housing minister, said the Tories would reform or leave the convention.
He told Sky News: “I think the country faces a choice. Do we want to get the economy firing on all cylinders or not?
“We’ve got to reform the planning system and we’ve got to ensure that judicial review… is not used to gum up the system and this convention is clearly one of the issues that has to be addressed.
“We either reform it, if that’s possible. I’m very sceptical because accords like this are very challenging and it takes many many years to reform them.
“If that isn’t possible, then we absolutely should think about leaving because what we’ve got to do is put the interest of the British public first.”
Mr Jenrick also attacked the lawyers who work on Aarhus cases on behalf of clients.
“A cottage industry has grown. In fact, it’s bigger than a cottage industry,” he said.
“There are activist lawyers with campaign groups who are now, frankly, profiteering from this convention. And it is costing the British taxpayer a vast amount of money. These lawyers are getting richer. The country is getting poorer.”
Get ready, children. There’s a new electric bike licensing scheme that will soon be tested as one of several methods designed to help educate young riders on responsible road use and combat the growing concern of dangerous e-bike riding among youths around the world.
Known as the Student Bicycle License Scheme (SBLS), the proposal in New South Wales, Australia, will operate as a trial of a new licensing program for electric bike riders. The program targets school-aged e-bike riders in response to a growing number of accidents and misuse cases involving young riders.
The pilot program will require students to complete an online training course and pass a knowledge test before being issued a digital license to ride an e-bike or e-scooter. The scheme is expected to launch later this year in select schools, and if successful, could pave the way for a broader rollout.
Schools in Sutherland and Newcastle have reportedly expressed interest in joining the program, which leaves it up to individual schools to decide how they wish to use the new license program. For example, they can make it mandatory for students who want to ride to school or use secured bicycle parking facilities at the school.
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Police in Sydney stop an electric bike rider (image via: Reddit)
The trial will initially focus on education rather than enforcement. Students who complete the course will receive a digital “ride-ready” credential, but there are currently no plans to introduce fines or penalties for unlicensed riders during the pilot phase. The government is partnering with road safety experts and schools to develop the training materials, which will cover speed limits, helmet use, sidewalk etiquette, and proper intersection behavior.
Australia’s National Transport Research Organisation is also reviewing current electric micromobility laws, with a report expected by the end of the year. The Queensland trial is seen as a possible blueprint for other regions facing similar safety concerns.
The announcement comes as electric bikes become increasingly popular among Australian youth, not just as toys, but as practical transportation to and from school, work, and social events. With that growth has come scrutiny – several high-profile crashes, some involving modified or overpowered e-bikes, have pushed lawmakers to act.
The same phenomenon is playing out around the world, including in Europe and the US, where young riders have increasingly taken to electric bikes as an alternative form of transportation, though one that has raised concerns around road safety among a young populace who has yet to learn the rules of the road.
Electrek’s Take
This is one of several school-level educational outreach programs we’ve seen pop up lately, and I think these are great ideas.
While the idea of requiring a license to ride an e-bike might sound extreme in some places, Australia’s approach here is education-first, and it could actually be a smart move. It also seems like the license is designed to be effective without being a burden. If you can grasp the knowledge, you can pass the test. And since many of the issues surrounding young e-bike riders arise from a general ignorance of road rules, this could be an effective solution. Teaching young riders the rules of the road before they hit the pavement might help reduce injuries and improve public perception of micromobility. Plus, the fact that it is a digital license means that there would presumably be fewer costs involved, which will hopefully allow the program to be free of charge and further reduce the burden of the licensing process.
Of course this won’t do anything for the “hooligan” riders who know the rules and simply don’t care, but that’s where enforcement has to step in as the heavy-handed partner to education.
I think this is a great example of balanced e-bike regulation. A measured mix of education and enforcement is key to ensuring e-bikes remain safe while taking advantage of their myriad benefits to the public. And hey, it sure makes a lot more sense than NYC trying to cut the speed of all electric bikes in half overnight.
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Dan Wetzel is a senior writer focused on investigative reporting, news analysis and feature storytelling.
Give Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti credit for this: He will advocate for what he believes is best for one of the league’s teams. That’s true even if that same program previously unleashed an avalanche of headline-grabbing public accusations and animosity on him.
In this case, it’s Michigan football, which at the height of the 2023 advanced scouting/sign-stealing scandal hit Petitti with a blistering legal filing, claims of personal bias and choruses of boos and negative social media posts from fans.
Regardless, Petitti has sent a letter to the NCAA Committee on Infractions arguing that Michigan deserved no further punishment in a case focusing on the actions of former staffer Connor Stalions.
The letter was read at an early June infractions committee hearing in Indianapolis, multiple sources told ESPN. The NCAA has charged Michigan with 11 rule violations, six of them Level 1, which is classified as the most serious. The committee has yet to hand down a ruling, but one is expected before the 2025 season. It does not have to follow or even consider Petitti’s opinion.
The Big Ten confirmed to ESPN that Petitti sent the letter and said he would have attended in person but was recovering at the time from hip replacement surgery. The NCAA and Michigan are prohibited from commenting on a pending case. Petitti declined comment through a league spokesperson.
Petitti argued, sources said, that the Big Ten itself had already sufficiently punished the Michigan program when it suspended then-coach Jim Harbaugh for the final three games of the 2023 regular season: at Penn State, at Maryland and at home against Ohio State.
Even without Harbaugh, Michigan won all three en route to capturing the national championship.
The NCAA might still hit the Wolverines with penalties ranging from vacating past victories, a postseason ban, the suspension of coaches, a monetary fine or other measures.
Michigan, as ESPN previously reported, has proposed suspending current coach Sherrone Moore for the third and fourth game of the 2025 season for deleting a thread of text messages with Stalions as the scandal broke. Moore was the team’s offensive coordinator at the time. The NCAA was able to retrieve the texts, and Moore was not charged with having any knowledge of Stalions’ actions.
The NCAA could also punish individuals, including Harbaugh (now the coach of the Los Angeles Chargers), Stalions and others. Petitti’s letter did not address that, according to sources.
The concept of a league commissioner standing up for one of his conference’s teams is not unusual. The business of any conference is aided by its programs avoiding NCAA sanctions that might affect its ability to field competitive teams.
Petitti’s position is notable in this situation because of the extremely contentious relationship between him and Michigan when allegations first broke of Stalions sending friends and family to scout future Wolverine opponents and film sideline coaching signals.
Petitti, in a Nov. 10, 2023, letter to Michigan athletics director Warde Manual, laid out the Harbaugh suspension by arguing that “the integrity of competition is the backbone of any sports conference or league.” He noted that “taking immediate action is appropriate and necessary.”
Michigan, to put it lightly, disagreed.
The school vehemently fought back, arguing that due process had not been followed, the case lacked conclusive evidence, and there was no proof that Harbaugh had knowledge of Stalions’ activities.
The university even sought an emergency temporary restraining order in Washtenaw (Michigan) County Court against the Big Ten to let Harbaugh keep coaching.
In a fiery court filing, the school claimed the Big Ten’s actions “were fraudulent, unlawful, unethical, unjustified, and per se wrongful, and were done with malice.” It further claimed the league was causing irreparable damage to the reputations of Harbaugh and the university, declaring the suspension a “flagrant breach of fundamental fairness.”
The school eventually backed down and withdrew the restraining order request, but the rift between the team and the commissioner remained as Harbaugh was benched.
The suspension became a rallying cry for Michigan players as they continued their 15-0 season. Petitti chose to not attend the Ohio State-Michigan game in Ann Arbor that season, even though it was one of the biggest games in league history. The Big Ten said Petitti was never scheduled to attend the game.
A week later, at the Big Ten title game, Michigan fans lustily booed Petitti when he presented the championship trophy to injured Wolverines player Zak Zinter (notably, not Harbaugh, despite having completed his suspension by then).
All of that appears to be behind the commissioner. To Petitti, making Michigan overcome a three-game stretch without its head coach was apparently enough of a penalty. He noted in his initial 2023 decision that the suspension was not about Harbaugh but was a way to hit the program as a whole.
“We impose this disciplinary action even though the Conference has not yet received any information indicating that Head Football Coach Harbaugh was aware of the impermissible nature of the sign-stealing scheme,” Petitti wrote. “This is not a sanction of Coach Harbaugh. It is a sanction against the University.”
He also allowed that “additional disciplinary actions may be necessary or appropriate if [the NCAA or Big Ten] receives additional information concerning the scope and knowledge of, or participation in, the impermissible scheme.”
That Petitti is now suggesting that Michigan has paid its penance suggests no such additional information has emerged.
Apparently, bygones are now bygones, even B1G ones.