At what price paid

I awoke Thursday morning like many Americans, to a report of a terrible shootout with police in Utah overnight. One officer dead, five seriously wounded. What possibly could have happened.

Now that the facts are beginning to trickle out, it is looking to me as if a tragedy has occurred, A tragedy of overreaction and a tragedy of police charging in like gang busters on a simple violation of personal marijuana use. I am hoping I am wrong.

Other facts will trickle out over time on this incident. I certainly hope that my gut feelings are wrong on this. I certainly hope that a geared up paramilitary drug unit hell bent on proving themselves,  didn't assault a man's home over something no more sinister than the fact that he uses marijuana in his own home to help chase away the demons in his head. Because if that is in fact, what the Ogden police drug task force did was very wrong and we must ask ourselves one question. A war on drugs at what price paid? .

Suspect in Deadly Utah Shootout Had PTSD

Search warrant in hand, a team of bulletproof vest-wearing officers rapped on the door of a small, red-brick Utah house, identifying themselves as police. When no one responded, authorities say, the officers burst inside.

That's when the gunfire erupted.

When it was over Wednesday night, a 7-year veteran officer was dead and five of his colleagues were wounded, some critically. The suspect, an Army veteran whose estranged father said suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have been self-medicating with marijuana, was injured.