The Trouble With Guns

This time, from Farmington, NM.  

You get into these terrible situations where cops feel they have no option but to kill you. My sister once nearly got into a shootout with cops. Guns heighten the danger of misunderstandings.  That's among the reasons I have no guns:

The neighborhood was dark when police arrived, and dispatch gave officers both the correct house number – 5308 – as well as a photo of the correct house, the attorneys said. 

But the officers went to the wrong house – 5305 – and knocked on the door. “Their announcement was not loud,” the Dotson family attorneys said. 

After no one answered the door, an officer asked dispatch to call the house to talk with the residents – but “no phone is heard ringing; no sound is heard at all,” the attorneys said. 

The police bodycam footage shows an officer walking away from the front porch when Dotson, armed with a gun, opens the door. 

“There is no announcement of ‘POLICE’ despite more than ample time. And that is obviously crucial,” his family’s attorneys said in the statement. “Wrong address. Late at night. The Dotson’s never called the police.” 

The officers’ encounter with Dotson happened quickly, and it can be difficult to decipher everything that happened in those few seconds. 

According to Dotson’s family attorneys, a “freeze frame of the tape shows Robbie holding the gun, and not pointing it at the officers. Rather, the gun is clearly pointed down at the ground.”