Constable Zachary Rolfe was racist and it cannot be ruled out that his attitudes contributed to his conduct on the night he shot and killed Kumanjayi Walker, a coroner has found.
Rolfe shot Walker, a Warlpiri man, three times while trying to arrest him on 9 November 2019 in Yuendumu, about 300km from Alice Springs.
Walker, 19, stabbed Rolfe with a pair of scissors shortly before he was shot by the then constable three times. Rolfe was found not guilty in March 2022 of charges of murder and manslaughter relating to Walker’s death.
He has since been dismissed from the force for matters not directly related to the shooting.
The inquest findings into Walker’s death were delivered by the Northern Territory coroner, Elisabeth Armitage, in Yuendumu on Monday.
She said she could not exclude the possibility that Rolfe’s views had contributed to the fatal shooting. “Mr Rolfe was racist, and he worked in and benefited from an organisation with the hallmarks of institutional racism,” Armitage said.
“While it was not possible for me to say with certainty that Mr Rolfe’s racist attitudes were operative in his decisions on 9 November or were a contributing cause of Kumanjayi’s death, I cannot exclude that possibility. That I cannot exclude that possibility is a tragedy for Kumanjayi’s family and community, who will always believe that racism played an integral part in his death and is a taint that may stain the NT police.”
It was important that NT police did not consider Rolfe as “one bad apple”, she said.
She said the racist awards uncovered as part of Rolfe’s evidence before the inquest were a “grotesque” example of racism, and found that Rolfe and his superiors repeatedly used racist language and behaviours.
She said that as Walker’s family had always believed racism played a part in the shooting, the fact she could not exclude this would be a “tragedy” for them.
Armitage found that Rolfe had used unnecessary force during five previous arrests and she had concerns about a further two. She said it was “disturbing” Rolfe had used his phone to record the body-worn camera footage of forceful arrests of at least five Aboriginal men.
He replayed the footage to colleagues or forwarded the videos to family and friends because he was boasting about the arrests. “He thought that using force against arrest targets and causing them serious injury was funny,” Armitage found.
“That he videoed, shared and derived enjoyment from his use of force is evidence of the extent of his dehumanisation of suspects, which may have led him to error on 9 November 2019.
“An officer who dehumanises and devalues the lives of arrestees may be less inclined to do everything necessary to avoid injuring them. He may be more inclined to rush in without regard for subjects’, his, or others’ safety. He might be insufficiently risk-averse.”
Rolfe’s tendencies to rush into situations “to get his man” without regard for his safety and that of others, disregard his training, be dismissive of his superiors, women and police who worked in remote communities, and dehumanise suspects all contributed to the shooting, Armitage found.
This included disregarding an arrest plan circulated by Sergeant Julie Frost, the officer in charge of Yuendumu, who suggested it would be safer for Walker to be arrested early the next morning, rather than on the night he was pursued by Rolfe.
“The real failures on 9 November 2019 occurred in the lead-up to Mr Rolfe’s entry into house 511 and in the way he approached Kumanjayi once inside the house.
“Mr Rolfe’s conduct was in keeping with what I have found to be his tendencies – to rush into situations without regard for the consequences of his actions, to prioritise getting his man above other considerations like safety, and his attraction to adrenaline-style policing.
“In addition, his interactions with Sergeant Frost and his disregard for the arrest plan, are in keeping with his demonstrated lack of discipline and his contempt for authority, bush cops, and women.”
Armitage found that while there was no evidence Rolfe was drug-affected on the night of the arrest, the NT was the only Australian jurisdiction that did not require police to undergo drug and alcohol testing.
“This was a live issue given Mr Rolfe’s demonstrated history of recreational drug use and his recent use of prescribed medication. The consequence is that, while there is no evidence to suggest that Mr Rolfe was adversely affected by any substance, there is also no objective evidence that he was not.”
Armitage also said she recommended that the NT police included Walker’s arrest as part of training on “officer-induced jeopardy”, which she defined as “an expression that describes situations where officers needlessly put themselves in danger, making themselves and others vulnerable, and creating a situation that justifies the use of deadly force”.
“Kumanjayi’s death in Yuendumu on 9 November 2019 was avoidable,” Armitage said. “Although in some significant respects the failures were institutional, I share the view expressed by the use-of-force experts and several highly experienced senior police officers who said that this was a case of officer-induced jeopardy.”
It was also important for NT police to consider how to safely interact with people such as Walker, who she found reacted as he did on the night of the arrest because of his exposure to alcohol, violence and trauma from a young age, including being exposed to alcohol before he was born.
She did not find that militarisation of the police had occurred but encouraged the NT police to continue a program that involved them working with the large number of former defence personnel in the force.
Rolfe, a former soldier, was found to have used military “house clearing” techniques during the attempted arrest.
Armitage delivered a summary of her 680-page findings on a stage at PAW Media, a Warlpiri media organisation near the centre of Yuendumu, watched by a large crowd of family, community members and media.
The acting police commissioner, Martin Dole, was one of several senior officers in attendance. While the senior officers were not armed, a group of about four other uniformed officers were.
Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, a senior Warlpiri elder and White’s grandfather, said in a statement before the inquest that NT police should not come to Yuendumu with guns.
A man shouted expletives and other insults at police shortly before the inquest findings were delivered, questioning why so many police were there, but left the site voluntarily before the findings were delivered after Hargraves spoke to him.
Phillip Boulten SC, who represented NAAJA, Julian McMahon SC, representing the Parumpurru committee of the Yuendumu community, Andrew Boe, acting for the Walker, Lane and Robertson families, and Luke Officer, for Rolfe, were among the lawyers in attendance.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
