Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker says the police rank-and-file have “dramatically” more confidence in him since “truths” have been revealed at the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker.

An August NT Police Association member survey found 90 per cent of those surveyed had no confidence in his leadership.

But in a rare public appearance on Wednesday to address the media following a crime crisis in Alice Springs, Mr Chalker said he felt more officers have confidence in him today, despite the inquest still ongoing.

“I think it’s changed dramatically since a lot of truth has come out,” he said, adding that the attrition rate has “dropped markedly”.

“We’ve made significant arrests, we’ve loaded up the jails, justice is being done and we are out there providing support to the community.”

Mr Chalker said the inquest had provided “the truth” and that racist text messages shared between officers in Alice Springs, including Constable Zach Rolfe, were “completely and utterly reprehensible”.

“People have now seen the truth for what it is as the evidence has been presented and are now making the appropriate judgment calls,” he said.

“There is a cultural change going on and people now understand why that has occurred.”

Mr Chalker added he was cleaning up the issues that all took place before he became commissioner.

His comments come before Coroner Elisabeth Armitage has finished her report into the death of Mr Walker and before public hearings have ended, which are expected to now carry over into next year.

While the text messages have become the centre of the coronial inquest’s narrative to date, on Tuesday the NT Police’s former lead coronial investigator Scott Pollock told the inquest the police’s criminal investigation into Constable Rolfe for the shooting was the most biased investigation he had witnessed in his long and distinguished career.

Mr Pollock said he was taken off the coronial investigation after raising concerns that “critically important” evidence had been supressed from key witnesses, that training at the police college was not up to standard, that the police’s use-of-force expert was unsuitable and that former assistant commissioner Nick Anticich had become “abusive, intimidatory and threatening” in a phone call when the issue of the biased investigation was raised.

Mr Pollock was removed from the case and later took early retirement, with the entire affair affecting his health, he told the inquest.

Mr Chalker has showed no contrition for the multitude of problems facing the NT Police force, repeatedly downplaying the damning results of the member survey that the police association said showed the force was “in complete crisis”.

Mr Chalker also claimed on Wednesday that morale was clearly no longer at record lows, because he was sending 40 officers to Alice Springs to help deal with a lawless state that local officials have said the government has lost control over.

“Forty people – police officers – are packing up to go and do that,” he said. “That doesn’t signal poor morale to me.”