81-year-old Isaac Singletary was gunned down in his yard by police who were investigating someone else.

Singletary was known for chasing drug dealers off his property, but when he emerged with a gun and threatened two undercover officers lurking in his yard, they promptly took him down. It was Jacksonville, Florida's third fatal police shooting in 3 weeks.

An investigation is pending, but the police chief sounds confident (predictably) that the shooting was justified. From News4Jax.com:

"You don't expect somebody to come pointing a gun at you, and once they do that, the officers will tell them to drop the gun," JSO Chief Dwain Senterfitt said. "We're still investigating what statements were made, but obviously, at that point, the officers' lives were in danger."

I fail to understand what's so surprising about someone defending their property from unknown trespassers in a high-crime neighborhood. If the officers were surprised to be confronted, they shouldn't have been. They were out of uniform on private property.

It seems likely that both parties involved in this tragedy could have handled it better. Hindsight is 20/20. But the drug war is blind. Prohibition would still be a nightmare if police could enforce it without killing innocent people. Unfortunately, they can't.

Rest in peace, Isaac Singletary. And all the others.