Investigations launched into multiple Taser use on helpless man

When an Oglala Sioux Tribal police officer used her Taser several times on a man lying helpless on the ground in Manderson on Friday afternoon, she was trying to get the man "to wake up and stand up," Ron Duke, chief of the OST Department of Public Safety, said Monday.

The man, Duke said, was "lying on the ground, probably passed out, clearly intoxicated."

The incident was caught on camera by a passerby who taped the officer repeatedly zapping the man who appears to never resist, defend himself or make any threatening moves.

An expert in Tasers said using the shocking device is exactly the wrong way to get someone who is unconscious or lying down to stand up and respond to orders.

"You can't resist if you're unconscious," said Chuck Drago, of Oviedo, Fla., who has 35 years of experience in law enforcement and has testified as an expert witness more than 30 times.

And a couple more links on Police Corporal Becky Sotherland: (BTW, extremely bad news for her that her last name has a very unusual spelling that makes her instantly googlible by anybody she meets the rest of her life)

‘Life-long bond’ is formed. 9-11 Dispatcher and C-130 Crash Survivor

(S.D.)-Police Corporal Who Tazered Man Has Great Record

Law and disorder on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There's quite a bit in this MSNBC article from May about Officer Becky Sotherland and the nature of her job. Dang! This deep-sixes most of my speculations about her - especially about her being a newbie, knowing nothing of drunks, etc, etc. Mea Culpa! It sounds like she's been patrolling there WAY more than long enough - including much of that time patrolling alone (unless she's lying to the MSNBC reporter who rode with her) - to know more about handling drunks than the average cop in the US would know. There's a photo of her leaning down to talk to two young Indian kids standing in a front door. This photo became infamous a month ago, as you'll see in the next link ....

Whoops! MSNBC Runs Photo of Native Americans as ‘Immigrants’. Heh heh! Actually pretty funny. A liberal Native American online site called "Indian Country Today Media Network" takes MSNBC to task just a month ago, because Rachel Madcow did an attack piece on FoxNews that she illustrated with a photo purportedly of a cop talking to illegal immigrant kids who had called 911, when in fact the photo was actually from the earlier story MSNBC had done about Pine Ridge, and was the photo of the now-infamous Becky Sotherland talking to the two Native-American kids at the door. Heh! Some Pine Ridge locals who watch MSNBC saw the misused photo and alerted Indian Country Today staff, who were p****ed off that Oglala Lakota children were falsely portrayed as illegal immigrants, even if it was by a media organ that they admire. BTW, I doubt if it was an innocent mistake by MSNBC .... they probably thought they wouldn't get caught. This photo, of a large adult white cop dwarfing two cute little dark-skinned kids at their front door, was chosen to evoke sympathy for Madcow's bogus accusation against FoxNews - of allegedly advocating that cute little illegal immigrant kids in imminent grave danger, should not be allowed to call 911 to save their lives.

May '14: Photo With Original Caption, from MSNBC "Law and disorder" article linked above:

CAPTION: Officer Becky Sotherland at a home after a 911 call reported an adult was intoxicated. No one was found and Sotherland suspected it was a prank call.

Late July, '14: Rachel Madcow's misuse of her own network's 2-month old photo....

"She could not be sure if the man was simply drunk, or if his diminished consciousness was due to a stroke, heart attack, or some other medical condition."

Perhaps.

OTOH, the PMSNBC article has a few interesting factoids about policing this reservation that shed some light on how much experience their officers have when it comes to identifying a drunk:

200,000 calls per year to Reservation Police.
80% of those, or 160,000, are alcohol-related.
Tribal Police force = 35 officers, plus 12 supervisors.
Assuming all 47 of them equally share the burden of responding to calls, that's still 3404 alcohol-related calls per officer, plus 851 non-alcohol-related calls per officer.
They have 2 million acres to patrol.
Many districts covered by one officer per shift.
Some police vehicles log 100,000 mi/year.
Some areas are 45-60 min from nearest jail, meaning a single arrest = 2 hrs of time.
Cash-strapped Oglala tribe has cut force 50% since 20 yrs ago, including the sole "Officer Support Counselor" on the staff.

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