In the wake of a second officer-related shooting in less than a month, the Oglala Sioux Tribe police chief said little this week about the incident.

Everett Little Whiteman told the Rapid City Journal one person was dead in a shooting Wednesday morning in Allen, S.D. He said little else, citing the ongoing investigation.

I have the greatest respect for the work tribal police do on sprawling reservations like the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where officers are called upon hourly to race to distant, nearly inaccessible locations to enforce constant violations of the tribe's prohibition on alcohol.

Having spent many hours riding along with those officers, I know they receive little to no support from the public for the dangerous, exhausting work they do. Rather, they are seen as the enemy by families ripped apart by alcoholism and violence.

That's why I don't relish saying the Oglala tribal police need to be more upfront about the details of the Wednesday shooting in Allen. The shooting, which involved a tribal police officer, comes barely three weeks after a tribal officer shot and critically wounded a man in Pine Ridge.

In that shooting, the officer seemed justified in shooting the man, who allegedly had assaulted the officer.

I have every confidence the same is true in this latest shooting.

Oglala police care deeply for their people. I've seen a tribal officer tell the daughter of a drunk woman that he wished the daughter hadn't told him her mom was drinking because he was now forced to arrest the mother. Alcohol is banned completely on Pine Ridge. You can't sell it, purchase it, transport it or consume it. So when an officer discovers someone has been drinking - even if they are asleep in their home - they must arrest that person.

But tribal police - understaffed and overextended in having to patrol a reservation the size of Connecticut - don't enjoy having to enforce such strict prohibitions. And they don't enjoy pulling sleeping mothers from their beds, where their children lie sleeping beside them.

But they do what they have to do.

And sometimes that involves killing dangerous people.

On Thursday morning, the reader comments on the Rapid City Journal story about the latest shooting in Allen reached nearly 50. Most were speculation: The tribal police should have been trained to avoid deadly violence after the July 12 shooting in Pine Ridge. Who's to say they weren't and that no other option was available to the officer who shot this person in Allen?

The Oglala police need to step out in front of this latest shooting before they are engulfed by irrational speculation.

I think they'll learn most tribal members respect them enough to trust them when they say they were justified in their actions and forgive them when they admit they weren't.