Dotson joined the Metropolitan Police Department, City of St. Louis on October 11, 1993; he was assigned to the Fourth District.
In 2008, he was promoted to captain where he served in the office of the Chief, the Seventh District, and the Board of Police Commissioners.
Prior to being named Police Commissioner, he served as the city's operations director.
[13] After that he worked as Director of Security for the Washington Nationals baseball team,[14] before being appointed in October 2018 as assistant chief of police for Amtrak.
[3] Dotson disclosed that for years he had been estranged from his mother, who in 2018 was convicted for theft of over $2 million from a real estate company.