'It's a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules': Court suppression lifted on Rolfe text messages | NT Independent

‘It’s a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules’: Court suppression lifted on Rolfe text messages

by | Mar 20, 2022 | Court | 0 comments

Several months before the fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu, Constable Zachary Rolfe described his job as getting to do “cowboy stuff with no rules” in a text message to an Army mate, that has now had a NT Supreme Court non-publication order on it lifted, the media have reported.

Constable Rolfe was found not guilty of murder, and two alternative charges by a Supreme Court jury on March 11, for the shooting death, that resulted from his deployment to the remote Aboriginal community as one of four officer sent in the NT Police’s Immediate Response Team.

During an attempted arrest, the 19-year-old Indigenous man, Mr Walker, was shot three times after he stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder with scissors on November 9, 2019. It was the second two shots that Constable Rolfe fired that were the subject of the murder charge.

On Friday Justice John Burns agreed with an application from media organisations, to lift suppression orders, including on the text messages, and information on an unrelated court matter in which a judge found Constable Rolfe assaulted an Aboriginal man and lied about it in his testimony.

The order had prevented the media from reporting on Constable Rolfe’s text messages, which were also not allowed to be tendered as evidence during the five-week trial.

The ABC reported the court had not yet provided the text messages to the media, but it had verified two text messages, which court documents show were sent in February and July 2019.

“Alice Springs sucks ha ha. The good thing is it’s like the Wild West and f*** all the rules in the job really … but it’s a shit hole. Good to start here coz [sic] of the volume of work but will be good to leave,” he is reported to have said in one.

And in another: “We have this small team in Alice, IRT, immediate response team. We’re not full time, just get called up from Gd’s [general duties] for high risk jobs, it’s a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules.”

The messages had been allowed to be part of the Crown evidence but trial Justice Burns ruled them inadmissible in December after the defence appealed against their inclusion.

The judge agreed to lift all suppression orders after finding that public scrutiny of the court’s decisions outweighed any potential risks to Constable Rolfe’s reputation.

In his reasons for not allowing them as evidence, Justice Burns said the messages were capable of inferring Constable’s Rolfe’s attitude when sent, but it required a different “reasoning process” to infer he still had the same attitude at the time of the shooting.

“The evidence reveals the expression of an attitude on the part of the accused that the ‘rules’ do not apply to him in his activities as a police officer,” Justice Burns said.

On Friday Constable Rolfe’s barrister, David Edwardson argued against lifting the non-publication order, saying they could be defamatory.

“It’s the imputation that attaches to the [communication] itself, and how the prosecution unsuccessfully argued, or sought to argue, that there was some sinister connotation to what was said,” Mr Edwardson told the court.

“Those text messages were made to members of the army and they were made in the context of the army. Nothing to do with this case. Nothing to do with the context in which he was charged.”

Crown Prosecutor Philip Strickland told the court it arguing they were was defamatory was baseless.

“They are simply communications by [Constable Rolfe] in his own words, which relate to his attitude or his thoughts about the IRT or police at a particular time.”

Acting Territory Coroner Judge Elisabeth Armitage will preside over a coronial inquest into Mr Walker’s death in September.

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