ANALYSIS: A Territorian joked this week that if they were pulled over by a cop, they would wonder if the officer was a criminal and whether they needed to be making a citizen’s arrest.

Sadly, what we are dealing with inside police is not a joke. This is how it is in the Northern Territory now.

Police Commissioner Martin Dole and Chief Minister and Police Minister Lia Finocchiaro, are the latest leaders responsible for the NT Police force becoming the butt of jokes about state-sanctioned criminals walking among us in blue uniforms.

Many people in the NT would know what you mean if you refer to the TRG Five.

Dole and Lia have allowed a staggering double standard to exist that serves them both, perhaps it is a triple standard.

While some in the force are protected from being investigated for very serious crimes, others are given the treatment civilians would be subjected to.

And some, including those who have given information to, or were wrongly suspected of giving information to the NT Independent, or have reasonably criticised the police executive through our pages, have been subjected to cruel and unusual persecution or prosecution.

Ask Carey Joy, ask Leith Phillips, ask Mark Casey. Hell, ask Scott Pollock, the highly respected, long-serving former Superintendent who got punished, essentially had his career ended, for attempting to tell the truth in the Kumanjayi Walker coronial investigation by going against the dark power of the executive.

There is an unfathomableness about what goes on here.

You would have to ask why certain officers are immune from investigation. Is it because that investigation would implicate people more senior than them, or is it because police have “stuff” on each other, creating a dangerous game for members of the top brass career-wise, if they were hold others to account.

It is the use of authorities that are supposed to expose all this, such as the former Office of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, the Ombudsman, and independent inquiries, that don’t investigate properly or are used to cover up serious transgressions that further undermines the public’s confidence.

For example, the new Integrity and Ethics Commissioner Peter Shoyer, as the previous ombudsman, found it was “not in the public interest” to investigate allegations senior NT Police detective Wayne Newell perverted the course of justice while in a key role in the Zach Rolfe murder investigation for manipulating a supposedly independent report. (Shoyer is now the Integrity and Ethics Commissioner with former police commissioner Reece Kershaw helping him determine who gets investigated and who doesn’t).

A former NT cop recently said the purpose of a system is what it does.

It is a heuristic that a system’s true purpose is revealed by its actual behaviour and outcomes, rather than the intentions or claims of those who design or manage it.

When applied to the NT Police, the discrepancy between the force’s stated goals such as maintaining public trust and ethical and diligent service, and its actions, show the system’s purpose appears to be the preservation of senior executive’s interests and the normalisation of misconduct.

The agency asserts that “racism in any form is abhorrent” however, the system’s actual output is the protection of senior officers accused of serious integrity breaches involving racism.

There is no point in claiming the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.

The recent demotion of Assistant Commissioner Janelle Tonkin suggests superficially a willingness to enforce discipline, although what she is alleged to have done is a mystery wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a fat greasy coating of NT enigma.

Conceivably it could be anchored in the dark and twisted rot, a black mould if you will, the career killing microfungi of infighting that infects the NT Police executive and which is currently the subject of an investigation by a seconded AFP officer which seemingly continues to drag on in the hope we all forget about it.

Whatever the cause of Tonkin’s fall, this rare act of accountability stands in stark contrast to so many others in recent years who have acted with impunity.

There is a long list of serious wrongdoing without consequence that would have the rank-and-file more demoralised than a drive back into the Territory along the Barkly Highway.

Breaches of public trust ignored and covered up by police executive

Over the last seven years we have witnessed officers – including a police commissioner who reasonably could be considered to have attempted to pervert the course of justice – provide false declarations and statements, obtain benefit by deception, attempt to destroy evidence and distribute an intimate image without consent, among other things.

Then there is the issue of the police executive “jobs-for-mates-gate” where ICAC found the then-police commissioner Michael Murphy was “incompetent and negligent” and failed to disclose conflicts of interest when hiring his personal friend, Peter Kennon, as an assistant commissioner.

While Murphy was not initially named, Lia Finocchiaro, who knew who the accused was, publicly wrote it off as a “learning tool” for other public servants, perhaps naively thinking his name would never legally be made public.

Murphy probably would never have been sacked if it was not for the NT Independent’s persistence, the ABC and independent Justine Davis’ threat to name him in Parliament.

Finocchiaro, after floundering for a week, was forced to announce an inquiry, something Dole – as the acting police commissioner following Murphy’s demise – did not think was necessary, maybe for a key reason that will become clear soon.

The inquiry was conducted by Justice Alan Blow, but not under the Inquiries Act, meaning he was purposely prevented from properly investigating serious allegations of rampant favouritism, bias in hiring, and unmanaged conflicts of interest, resulting in his inability to ascertain whether several senior appointments were filled properly.

All the names and the most serious wrongdoings were removed from the report, as if it was unnecessary for the public to know who was responsible for what occurred.

We still don’t know exactly which senior police officers did the wrong thing, but the investigation included the 2024 appointment of Dole to deputy commissioner. Dole used taxpayer money to hire lawyers to respond to Blow’s enquiries.

Days after his report found serious dysfunction in how senior officers were promoted, including that merit is not the over-arching principle, Finocchiaro named Dole as the next NT Police Commissioner without going through a proper hiring process to seek the best candidates.

The NT Police Association called that decision “mindboggling”.

We would call what is happening with NT Police kafkaesque, a term named after Bohemian novelist Franz Kafka: it is not just bizarre, but surreal, nightmarish, and bogged down in a twisted, nonsensical system operating on a distorted institutional illogical loop that you are forced to play along with, even though it is designed to make you fail.

Effectively Dole is ruling without legitimacy because of the still unexplained way he obtained his last two promotions. Taking Ozempic is not a good enough reason to become commissioner.

Tonkin is now the only one of those 23 senior appointments made under former police commissioner Murphy that were investigated by Blow to be removed from their role, but we are told that was not because of the inquiry.

She sat on promotional panels for two officers she had sex with, allegedly without declaring a conflict of interest, which she contests, but one of those officers who was promoted to commander, John Atkin, is now an acting assistant commissioner and has been for some time.

Kennon, the man whose promotion sparked the ICAC investigation, remains in his role and we are told he is, temporarily at least, responsible for the Ethical and Professional Standards Command, the toe cutters, the unit responsible for investigating police corruption, misconduct, and malpractice. Another officer who was found guilty in court is also working in that unit.

The current executive team listed on the NT Police’s website includes four assistant commissioners (two in acting roles), including Kennon and Atkin, whose positions were awarded under suspicious circumstances, James A O’Brien and Michael White, with White understood to be on extended leave.

No action taken against five lying cops, promotions instead

Some of the current problems are residual from the dark Jamie Chalker days. As commissioner, he attempted to hide a damning coronial report critical of the criminal investigation into Zach Rolfe, which a judge said could have caused the trial to miscarry or for Rolfe to be wrongfully convicted.

The NT Independent later revealed the document was significantly altered just two days after the NT Police brass discovered Rolfe’s legal team knew of its existence, putting some of the criticism back in that had been removed.

And of course, the TRG five, some of whom have been promoted: Meacham King, James Gray-Spence, Craig Garland, Shaun Gill, and Mark Clemmon remain untouched.

They infamously lied to the Kumanjayi Walker coronial inquest in an attempt to cover up the racist “Noogudah” awards also known as the “Coon of the Year” awards.

That attempt lasted three days until the evidence presented in court showed them to be liars. The coroner called the physical awards tabled “grotesque examples of racism”.

Who was the bumbling Machiavellian poseur behind this attempted deception? Well, the NT Police executive have never been interested in investigating because there is no benefit in investigating yourself.

Is there any current member of the police executive who was involved in that?

The level of stupidity in attempting what they did, can only ever be acceptable in a jurisdiction known for its ‘no consequences for the elite’ practices.

They badly covered their tracks by announcing a joint ICAC-NT Police investigation into what happened, and of course the Department of Public Prosecutions found there was not enough “admissible evidence” to charge anyone.

That was a guarantee when then-ICAC Michael Riches wrote to Murphy before the investigation started to state he had no intention of making adverse findings, and had pledged not to name any of the officers he spoke to about the awards, making their evidence inadmissible in court.

Dole, who was in charge of the police side, did his bit by not interviewing anyone or collecting any evidence.

He has still not explained why police failed to investigate the five again, and has not explained why no internal disciplinary action was taken, despite Murphy admitting to the coroner that the awards represented a “catastrophic failure” of the NT Police code of conduct.

Despite the flawed ICAC investigation and the refusal by the police commissioner to investigate some of the most well-known alleged criminals in the NT, Finocchiaro considers the case closed because it is convenient for her. Tough on crime for her does not extend past Indigenous youth to senior police officers.

There is no need to go into the issue of former constable Rolfe being charged for murder after four days following the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker, which has been much highlighted, and which led to the cover-up of racism in police, but there was something said about Rolfe during the coronial that exemplifies police currently.

In 2018, Rolfe was awarded a national police bravery medal, after he swam across a raging flooded river dressed only in his underwear and barefoot, and trekked five kms along an isolated bank to locate a missing, injured tourist before swimming her back to safety.

The high-priced silk Ian Freckelton, hired by police during the Walker inquiry, drew parallels between Rolfe’s actions in Yuendumu and the rescue.

“When we look back now with the wisdom that hindsight enables, we can see some of those characteristics and insubordination from the earliest days,” Freckelton said.

“…When he dived into the river to save somebody. As it turned out, it worked out all right, fortuitously for him and for others. But he’d been told not to for good reason. It was dangerous. It was putting people’s lives at risk. It could have gone hideously wrong.”

The officers awarded NT Police bravely medals last month for going into a burning house to try and rescue a child may now question if this will be turned against them one day.

Too many incidents of protected senior officers not being held to account for their actions

As mentioned earlier, although the ombudsman rejected a complaint from Rolfe’s lawyers accusing former sergeant Wayne Newell of perverting the course of justice by interfering with expert evidence and withholding material favourable to the defence, Newell was referred to Victoria Police investigators in September 2023, with the final report delayed until the completion of the Kumanjayi Walker inquest.

While that report remains hidden, Newell – who was also a lead investigator in the failed 2023 Colleen Gwynne abuse of office case – was suspended and ultimately sacked in August 2024 after pleading guilty to a “catfishing” incident where he impersonated a female officer on a dating app.

NT Police withheld details of the charges, and despite it not being a sex crime, Newell’s name was suppressed from public court lists, with the story finally being made public by the NT Independent.

There is also the matter of Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Tim Healey who shared a photo of a topless Aboriginal woman who appeared to be a victim of violence in a police chat. The disciplinary action against him was later overturned by former commissioner Murphy, who soon after nominated him for a National Police Service Medal. This matter only came to light through the Kumanjayi Walker coronial by Rolfe’s legal team.

Back in September 2021, Deputy Police Commissioner Murray Smalpage inadvertently live-streamed a video on Facebook of himself joking that the collective noun for police officers should be “a murder.” The comments sparked outrage and calls for his resignation from rank-and-file officers who saw it as a reference to the police shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker. Instead, he was allowed to issue a grovelling apology.

Acting Deputy Commissioner Travis Wurst was found by the coronial investigation to have appeared unaware of the operating procedures for deploying the Immediate Response Team on a high-risk operation when, as acting assistant commissioner, he authorised the team’s deployment to Yuendumu for the bungled arrest attempt that led to the death of Kumanjayi Walker. He has only been promoted since.

There was also a senior police executive who the NT Independent reported on a few years back, who allegedly told a young female police graduate he had “a spa and puppies” if she wanted to stop by to visit him some evening. The woman was allegedly told that by pursuing the complaint she could damage the man’s reputation. The idea of an external investigation into the senior officer’s behaviour was understood to have been considered and discussed but thrown out and an “in-house” investigation was conducted. He remained in his job.

In spite of the recent cover-ups, there is however a great example in NT Police about how corruption at the very top can be dealt with, involving the charging and jailing of former police commissioner John McRoberts.

While McRoberts was on an flight and out of contact, then-deputy commissioner Mark Payne authorised detectives to execute search warrants and arrest travel agent Xana Kamitsis. The seized data from that raid ultimately exposed McRoberts’s interference in her fraud investigation, leading to a Supreme Court conviction for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

There will be an announcement soon about two new deputy police commissioners, hopefully they will have the same fortitude as Payne and others, but it is most likely that will not occur, instead someone more likely to protect Dole will be appointed, and who will owe him a favour. Too bad some of those detectives who fought to investigate McRoberts cannot get the job, or at least clean officers from outside the NT.

While the appointments need to be merit-based we have no confidence that will happen because of, well, evidence. Finocchiaro incorrectly claimed at Estimates last month that the Justice Blow report made only two recommendations in his report.

The other four of the six formal recommendations, including that merit become the main determination for senior appointments; that the time period of acting appointments be limited; that the decision-maker for a position not sit on the hiring panel; as well as a ‘catch-all’ recommendation to address “miscellaneous” issues identified in the report were not acknowledged by Finocchiaro or Dole at the hearings.

The man at the heart of all this now, Dole, has a dual problem over questions of the legitimacy of his own last two promotions undermining his authority contributing to the public’s and rank-and-file’s view of him, and also what other senior officers could do to retaliate if he did find a way to convince himself to do the right thing.

If “Commissioner” Dole and Chief Minister Finocchiaro truly wish to restore confidence in the force, they must stop the selective application of discipline and investigate and charge criminals in their ranks and the ones who have already left.

But even that is no longer enough.

It is well past time for a full, public judicial inquiry to clean up the misconduct that has been allowed to fester at the highest levels of the NT Police for years.

Anything less is the continued betrayal of the hard-working officers on the frontline and the community they made an oath to serve.

David Wood has been a reporter in the Territory for most of the last 15 years for the NT Independent and NT News, interspersed with some time tending to cows and crops in Victoria, and working on the Daily Telegraph website in Sydney. He now covers crime and internal NT Police politics and happenings for the NT Independent and enjoys time in nature and being threatened by powerful people.