Dear Editor,

Is anyone perfect?

Once the NT Police Commissioner decided to throw a courageous and decorated junior Constable under the bus, there has been no respite from how low Chalker has been prepared to go to destroy Constable Zachary Rolfe BM.

The multi-million dollar murder trial was a complete fiasco and even with 40 Crown witnesses appearing compared to one defence witness, the five-week trial was decided in less than an hour after the jury had the opportunity to read the transcript of the judge’s directions.

The Commissioner had pledged to have a first-rate investigation that would withstand all scrutiny but it couldn’t even pass the scrutiny of an internal review by the Coroner’s Police Liaison Officer, Detective Scott Pollock.

Chalker misled the defence team by denying the report was relevant, and fought tooth and nail to stop defence seeing it, and finally pleaded to redact large sections prior to releasing it, after being ordered by the court to do so. But his actions, were far worse than reported so far.

The Crown has the responsibility of presenting ALL evidence before the jury whether it is in favour of the Crown case, or to its detriment. The Crown knew they were obligated to present Detective Scott Pollock as a Crown witness, and in fact the judge strongly recommended that they needed to present Pollock in fairness to the accused. It should be of no surprise to anyone why Pollock was not presented after the Commissioner had fought tooth and nail to hide his report.

The next attempt to destroy Rolfe, knowing that he would be exonerated for charges that should never have been laid, and which every investigator had argued against laying, was a nasty and vindictive character assassination. Chalker employed the same incompetent use-of-force expert who had been eviscerated in the Court and who the jury dismissed as completely unbelievable, to review Zach’s arrest record prior to the incident at Yuendumu.

Andrew Barram did review the 3,176 arrests and incidents that Rolfe was involved in during his almost three years in Alice Springs. Barram then focused on 5 of the 46 incidents that Rolfe had reported he used force, all of which were cleared by a Sergeant and a Senior Sergeant, or by a Sergeant and a Commander. Barram decided unilaterally that he thought those five should be re-investigated as they showed a tendency on Rolfe’s part to use force when dealing with violent offenders.

The Crown put forward four of those incidents as potential tendency evidence for the trial, but this argument was denied by the judge who explained the Crown were cherry-picking. The reason four incidents were put forward was because they each involved a violent Indigenous criminal and the Commissioner wanted to paint Rolfe as a racist cop. No explanation was provided as to why Barram’s fifth example was removed, but it did involve the arrest of a violent white criminal so it didn’t meet the narrative that was being pushed.

After Rolfe was exonerated, those incidents were re-investigated and all were cleared or dropped because Rolfe acted professionally and as per his training and it was never about finding fault, it was simply an attempt to destroy Zach’s reputation.

Previous incidents with Army explained

The latest attempt to break Rolfe’s reputation has been to trawl through his entire life to try and find fault and if necessary, only provide a glimpse of an incident to raise doubt and suspicion. And when you have 16 police officers working full time for two years trying to dig up dirt, this is the best they have come up with:

Over a decade ago Zach was selected to represent Australian Army in their First XV Rugby Team. With 30,000 members in the Australian Army many of whom are extremely fit, it is not easy to walk into the team within your first three months in the Army and prior to passing his initial employment testing, but that is what happened.

The following season Zach again was selected to represent Australian Army, and at one of the Army bases where the team was training, an extremely minor incident occurred. Two of the players went to a Barracks where soldiers lived, i.e. had their beds etc and one of the rugby players took a small packet of tobacco to the value of approximately $10 – remembering this is about 10 years ago now.

The following morning the other rugby player returned the tobacco to the Barracks but there had already been a complaint made between the time the tobacco had been taken and subsequently returned. Both rugby players were reprimanded and both punished by being sent home from the rugby camp. One of the players was the lowest rank in the Army, a private, while the other was an officer cadet who was about to graduate. Two days later, the private was recalled to return to the rugby camp and represent Australian Army as his punishment for simply returning the tobacco was seen as ridiculous. The other player was not recalled.

Now the NT Police are going to try and suggest Zach stole ‘something’ for being involved in an incident that involves $10 worth of tobacco that was missing for about eight hours, but they deliberately withheld the main parts of the story to deliberately mislead people, because if they said Zach accepted the punishment only to return to the rugby camp within 48 hours because he was in fact the one who returned the tobacco would only show Zach to possess integrity that is sadly lacking in the NT Police Executive.

The second incident involving Zach in the Army actually occurred at a similar time and just like the first incident it does give a glimpse of his character and his sense of justice.

While stationed with 1RAR in Townsville, Zach was on his way back to base late one evening when another soldier raced up to him and said another soldier was being attacked by four men only two blocks away. This soldier then ran off in search of reinforcements while Zach raced towards the confrontation.

Zach saw a man unconscious on the ground being kicked in the head, and unable to defend himself. Four adult males were attacking him unrelentingly, so Zach launched himself at the attackers. Zach was seriously outnumbered and in no real chance of winning this fight, but he knew that he had to take the fight away from the man lying prone on the ground. Within a few minutes the reinforcements arrived, but not before police had arrived and arrested the four men and issued Zach with a fine.

For Zach, it was imperative that the police call an ambulance and they did and that soldier had a lengthy stay in hospital. The police drove Zach back to base where he was handed over to the 2IC of the base who tore strips off Zach. The stern lecture stopped when he learned of the soldier being taken to hospital, and actually changed to praise, when it was revealed that in hospital the soldier was put into an induced coma for a week, and that once he was discharged from hospital that he was also discharged from the Army.

The unprovoked attack had cost him the vision in his right eye, but it could easily have cost him his life if Zach hadn’t single-handedly intervened against a far superior force with complete disregard for his own safety.

On the parade ground Zach was acknowledged as a hero who had not hesitated to save his colleague, it is a measure of the young man he was then and it is a testament to how he continues to live his life.

When Zach completed his application form to NT Police he had been posted to Afghanistan and been in the Army for five years. He neglected to write about the small monetary fine that was imposed by Queensland Police for the incident that occurred about four years earlier. However, prior to NT Police processing his application Zach phoned and let them know the full story and it had no impact on his selection. On his actual interview, the NT Police were actually extremely impressed with what Zach had done and said he was exactly who they wanted to recruit.

NT Police are now trying to use these two incidents to portray Zach as a bad person who should never have joined or been accepted into the police force. The exact opposite is true.

These incidents show Zach’s sense of justice, of right and wrong, of standing up for those needing help, of risking your own life to save others, and this is what makes Zach the ideal police officer.

The Commissioner has disingenuously claimed that he considered terminating Zach’s employment with NT Police but decided against it after reviewing the full circumstances. Unfortunately, he failed to include the full circumstances in the information that was provided to the Coronial Report because it actually shows Zach in a positive light.

The NT Police have failed to provide information about:

his physical ability to come first out of 540 applicants to join the NT Police Force,

of his intelligence in being Dux of his graduating class,

or his bravery at the river rescue in becoming the second most decorated police officer in NT within eight days,

or his Valour in saving his partners life on the night of the shooting,

or his compassion in trying to save the life of the offender immediately after the shooting,

or his resilience in overcoming the vendetta of abuse directed at him on the orders of the Commissioner over the past three years.

All the Commissioner has been able to do is find a couple of things that as a father, I am incredibly proud of. He has distorted them and deliberately covered up the main parts to raise doubts, but when viewed fully they show more about the character of the NT Police Executive than they do Zach. And although the Commissioner is quite prepared to harness all his resources to do a deep dive into every corner of Zach’s life, he has chosen to avoid spending 10 minutes reviewing the actions of the Officer in Charge at Yuendumu, Sergeant Julie Frost who refused to provide any first aid to Kumanjayi Walker despite being the most medically qualified person in the community on the night of the incident.

At the end of the day, people will make up their own minds, but I have never said Zach is perfect.

He just happens to be the closest thing to perfect the Northern Territory Police Force have ever had.

-Richard Rolfe, Canberra

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