Around 11:30 on a Wednesday night in April 2023, three police officers repeatedly knocked on the door of Robert Dotson’s house at 5305 Valley View Avenue in Farmington, New Mexico. They were responding to a report of “a possible
domestic violence situation,” but they were in the wrong place: They were supposed to be at 5308 Valley View Avenue, which was on the opposite side of the street. When Dotson, a 52-year-old father of two, came to the door with a gun in his hand, the cops shot and killed him.
That response, a federal judge in New Mexico ruled last week, was reasonable in the circumstances and therefore did not violate Dotson’s Fourth Amendment rights. The officers “reasonably believed that Dotson posed a severe risk of imminent harm” to them, U.S. District Judge Matthew Garcia writes in response to a federal civil rights lawsuit that Dotson’s family filed in September 2023. Garcia rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the officers—Daniel Estrada, Dylan Goodluck, and Waylon Wasson—”recklessly created the need to apply deadly force by going to the wrong address.”
Garcia concedes that the defendants’ conduct prior to the shooting was “not a paragon of careful policework,” which is quite an understatement. When the cops were dispatched to 5308 Valley View Avenue, he notes, Wasson “utilized his service vehicle’s mobile data terminal” to “locate the address, incorrectly placing the [house] on the right (south) side of the street.” Meanwhile, Goodluck, who was in a separate vehicle, “searched Google Maps to locate the property,” and that search correctly located the house as “being situated on the left (north) side of Valley View Avenue.”
When the officers arrived at the scene, Goodluck “continued to question whether [they] were headed to the correct residence,” Garcia says, but “he deferred to Officer Wasson’s seniority and said nothing.” After Wasson knocked on the front door of Dotson’s house three times without getting a response, Goodluck “finally voiced his concern that the Defendant officers went to the wrong address.” Pointing across the street, he said, “It might have been 5308. Right there.” Wasson was puzzled: “Is this not 5308? That’s what it said right there, right?” No, Goodluck replied: “This is 5305, isn’t it?”
Wasson then asked the dispatcher to confirm the correct address. After the dispatcher said “5308 Valley View Avenue,” Wasson jokingly said, “Don’t tell me I’m wrong, Dylan.” By this point, the plaintiffs say, the cops “were realizing they were at the wrong residence and were laughing about it.”
According to the lawsuit, Dotson and his wife, Kimberly, were upstairs in their bedroom when Wasson knocked on the front door. “The knock was not loud, and his announcement ‘Farmington Police’ could not be heard” on the second story, the complaint says. “The police vehicles were parked down the street and did not have their lights on.” But the couple “believed that they heard a knock,” so Dotson “put on his robe and went downstairs.” For “personal protection,” he “picked up the handgun which was kept on top of the refrigerator in the Dotson residence, not knowing what he might encounter at that late hour.”
When Dotson “opened his front door,” the lawsuit says, he “was blinded by police flashlights.” At that point, “the police did not announce themselves,” and Dotson “had no idea who was in his yard shining bright lights at him.” According to the lawsuit, Wasson, upon seeing Dotson’s gun, “opened fire instantly,” and “the other officers, Estrada and Goodluck, immediately followed by firing their guns.” Dotson was struck by 12 rounds.
Hearing the shots, Kimberly Dotson rushed downstairs and “saw her husband lying in his blood in the doorway,” the lawsuit says. She “still did not know what had happened [or] that police officers were in her front yard.” She “fired outside at whoever had shot her husband,” and the officers “each fired at Mrs. Dotson—another 19 rounds. Fortunately, she was not hit.”
At that point, according to the complaint, the officers “finally announced themselves, and Kimberly Dotson told them that someone had shot her husband and requested their help.” She “did not realize even at that moment that the three police officers had killed her husband,” which she did not learn “until she was finally told eight hours later at the police station where she was detained.”
After the shooting, the lawsuit says, “the officers involved did not disclose to investigators that they were at the wrong address, which was the error leading to the tragic result and without which it would not have occurred.” The mistake “was discovered by other officers who arrived at the scene.”
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