Manderson, in Shannon County SD, is in the middle of the Pine Ridge reservation here on google maps. This is where the cop seems to be working now, as a "Tribal Officer". Whether she's fulltime or parttime is unclear.
Hot Springs, a town of 3500+ is just to the west of the reservation in Fall River County. The 2012 link for this cop-coroner-cosmetologist mentions her working in Hot Springs, which is likely the city she referred to when listing one of her current jobs of "reserve city police officer".
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.