From [HERE] Last week, officers with the Farmington, N.M., Police Department responded to a call of a domestic violence incident. Police mistakenly arrived at the wrong house and shot and killed Robert Dotson after he opened his door armed with a handgun. 

New Mexico State Police are still investigating the incident, but the fatal shooting of the 52-year-old is just the latest example of police using lethal force against civilians in a state where this happens too frequently, critics say. 

Home to about 2.1 million people, New Mexico has one of the highest rates of police killings per capita in the country. 

Last year, 32 people — around 15 people per million — were killed by police in the state, according to data from MappingPoliceViolence.org. The project is part of Campaign Zero, a nonprofit focused on policing reform. 

New Mexico is second to Wyoming, with a population of about 581,000, where around 17 people per million were killed by police. 

"Who would have thought New Mexico would have one of the highest rates in the country?" said Howard Henderson, founding director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University. He's also a professor in the university's school of public affairs.

In New Mexico, the rate of police using lethal force is even higher if a Black resident is involved. Black people total around 2.7% of the state's population, yet they are nearly four times more likely to be killed by police than white people. Years of high-profile cases of Black people killed by police across the country show this is an ongoing problem due in part to racial bias in policing. 

MappingPoliceViolence.org data reflects any incident where a law enforcement officer (off-duty or on-duty) applies lethal force resulting in a civilian being killed. This is whether the killing was considered "justified" or "unjustified" by law enforcement. [MORE]