OPINION: The only way the Yuendumu community will ever recover, and get any form of justice from the death of Kumanjayi Walker is to free themselves of the NT Police executives’ constructed blame of Constable Rolfe, and look at the multitude of failures made by management sending the Immediate Response Team there in the first place, writes the former leader of that unit Carey Joy.

With the impending coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker it is incredibly important that his family and the people of Yuendumu have the ability to correctly understand the issues which have led to this tragic event.

This is the only way that they will ever see any justice, or have the ability to heal from this incident. This is also required for Constable Zach Rolfe and his family who have also suffered greatly through this ordeal. Neither party deserve the impacts of this misdirection campaign which is again showing signs of increasing given recent media and internal police command actions.

From the very first action of the NT Police police commissioner and executive after the incident was to charge Rolfe with murder. In my opinion this action was to provide a false sense of blame and to quell the anger and public order issues we saw immediately post the shooting.

As per a previous opinion piece I wrote the entire deployment of the Immediate Response Team to Yuendumu was completed in complete contradiction and non-compliance with tactical or IRT deployment rules.

As we have seen from Supreme Court evidence, Constable Rolfe was charged with murder before the investigation into this incident was even about 10 per cent concluded. Therefore, there is no way the executive would have established this was a definite case of murder at that stage.

However, what the executive would have established immediately was that the deployment was completely non-compliant as there were no records of any prior plans or risks assessments being completed before Constable Rolfe and the IRT were sent to Yuendumu to arrest Mr Walker.

So in the first instance, NT Police was faced with mass angry gatherings in the NT, the knowledge that their own management had failed in its duties, an Indigenous community screaming in anger with red paint, representing blood, being thrown on NT Police stations throughout the NT.

At this stage, in my opinion, which is also shared by many other officers, the decision to charge Constable Rolfe was primarily largely made to give the Indigenous community a sacrificial lamb, someone to blame and direct their anger towards.

This move worked very well as we all remember seeing the mass media attention all around Australia and the threads were all the same, Constable Rolfe was to blame, Constable Rolfe was a murderer etc. Not one of the stories or public calls for justice were targeted at NT Police or its management. The entire community completely forgot that Constable Rolfe didn’t choose to drive to Yuendumu himself and kill Mr Walker.

Constable Rolfe was deliberately deployed to the community by his bosses to locate and arrest Mr Walker but no one was screaming about this or demanding deployment information. Everything was targeted at one young Caucasian police officer now labelled a murderer of a young Indigenous boy.

Any person who had any form of legal or policing background was shocked by this murder charge as we all knew very well that to be charged with murder there has to be a belief that there was intent. This means that there must be obvious and very damming evidence on the body-worn video which showed Constable Rolfe had planned or wanted to kill Mr Walker. Section 156 of our Criminal Code Section 1 (C) clearly states, “the person intends to cause the death of”.

Subsequently we have all seen clearly through the Supreme Court trial the body-worn footage, that at the time of the murder charge being laid, there was absolutely zero evidence of any intent, thus confirming that the charge of murder against Constable Rolfe was completely unsubstantiated by the NT Police executive. This also explains why Constable Rolfe, after being charged with murder, was given bail to an interstate location as clearly there was not even enough evidence to even support a bail refusal.

During this time no media outlets other then the NT Independent has queried or highlighted the NT Police management’s deployment issues, which caused this entire tragedy.

The reality here is that there was never any real chance a murder conviction would ever be substantiated against Constable Rolfe, as there was never the required evidence to support such a charge or a conviction.

This is why in a very short time frame a jury of his peers unanimously acquitted Constable Rolfe on all charges. We saw devastating images of Indigenous people outside the courthouse crying and screaming about a miscarriage of justice and wanting Constable Rolfe re-tried.

Now, had this community not been fed a false narrative from the start, and had they been given a complete understanding of the issues at hand, the devastation in the verdict would never have occurred.

Post trial

The Supreme Court evidence shows that the entire approval to deploy the IRT to Yuendumu was given in under nine minutes on the phone – which is not enough time for proper plans or a risk assessment to be completed, which is required for such deployments.

We have also seen that the approving officer, now-Assistant Commissioner Travis Wurst, prior to giving the approval, hadn’t even entered Mr Walkers name into the NT Police PROMIS database to check if he had any alerts, such as that he may be violent, may attempt to escape, may have a medical condition etc. So not even the most basic form of check was completed.

We also see from Supreme Court evidence that when the approving officer was asked, “Assistant Commissioner, this is a document titled Standard Operating Procedures for the Alice Springs Immediate Response Team. Is that a document that you’ve encountered in your work”?

He answered with, “No, I’ve never seen this document before”.

This tells us with absolute confirmation that the senior executive member who approved the deployment of Constable Rolfe and the IRT, had completed zero investigations into Mr Walker to establish if he had any special needs at all, coupled with the fact this officer had also never even read the deployment guidelines and operating procedures document for Constable Rolfe and his team.

Again, more evidence during and post the Supreme Court trial, shows that independent risk assessments had been completed and the deployment to arrest Mr Walker was without doubt a high-risk deployment. This confirms again that Constable Rolfe and the IRT should never have been deployed to Yuendumu without specialist approved plans, equipment and personnel.

We have also seen that medical experts have claimed that the injuries Mr Walker suffered from the shooting were potentially survivable injuries had medical intervention been received. If the deployment had been completed correctly, there would have been medical plans for injuries or gunshot wounds, with medical attention on hand ready to go.

This same approving executive officer sent an email on November 7, two days before the shooting stating, “Are you all right, I see Warlpiri’s with the surname of Walker are still ours and my nemesis”.

How has this not been seen by the Indigenous community or NT Police management as highly unprofessional and aggressive?

So why have these failures not been highlighted with the Indigenous community or the family of Mr Walker?

Why are they not being exposed to the massive failures and deployment non-compliances by NT Police management?

Why is the Police Commissioner keeping all of this a secret and continually issuing non-disclosure orders on investigators, senior staff or Spotlight news crews?

Yet they allow the idea that Constable Rolfe is guilty to continue unchallenged.

Character assassination continued

During the Supreme Court trial, and post-trial, we have seen multiple examples of the NT Police investigators and executive trying to claim Constable Rolfe was a bad human. These tactics are also still being used now just one week out of the coronial commencement date.

We have all been exposed to these ideas:

1. Constable Rolfe may have drug use issues.
2. Constable Rolfe is an aggressive and mentally unstable person.
3. Constable Rolfe made comments about the IRT being a cowboy show with no rules.
4. Constable Rolfe may be subject to systematic racism.
5. Constable Rolfe can’t be at work as he could “trigger” three other police officers involved in the investigation and incident.

These accusations are completely destroyed when we look at NT Police management’s actions and facts.

If Rolfe had drug issues, why has he been allowed back at work without having to undergo any form of drug test or counselling? He was also not made to do drug tests throughout this entire event.

A level of aggression is a requirement of members who are selected into a tactical or IRT team. We don’t send non-aggressive people into harm’s way with automatic weapons and full ballistic protection who are going to turn and run the other way. In fact, in some tactical teams I have been involved with, if we aren’t identified as extroverted, have the characteristics to take charge and be assertive, then we aren’t selected. Constable Rolfe’s “aggression” was clearly controlled, which is the key given his demeanour seen the body-worn video.

The deployment of the IRT to Yuendumu with machine guns and absolutely no plans, by a boss who didn’t even read the deployment rules document, demonstrates 100 per cent it is in fact a cowboy show.

If Constable Rolfe was in any way racist, had mental issues or aggression issues, again, why has he been allowed back at work without having to undergo a departmental psych assessment? Clearly that is because they are all false accusations.

These are once again manipulative efforts by the NT Police executive to paint a picture of blame against Constable Rolfe which is completely unfounded, and a manipulative move by the management team.

The only way the Indigenous community will ever move forward from this and find any form of justice is to move away from the NT Police executive’s constructed Constable Rolfe tunnel vision and look at the multitude of failures of the management team that sent Constable Rolfe to Yuendumu in the first place.

Had the correct risk mitigation factors and plans been in place I have no doubt Kumanjayi Walker would still be alive today.

Carey Joy was recruited by the NT Police in 2000, and has worked in general duties, remote postings, the drug squad, juvenile crime, social order response, and in general crime whilst in the drug squad. His career was spent largely in the Territory Response Group, and working as a senior bomb technician. Mr Joy was also a federal agent in the Tactical Response Team, which was a national and international police tactical group working on deployments around Australia and overseas. His last five years in law enforcement were in Alice springs with the NT Police as a general duties shift sergeant and bomb technician for the Central region. Mr Joy resigned in May 2016, and started his own business to spend more time with his children.