By John Lawrence

OPINION: Halfway through Reconciliation Week, and two days after the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old, mentally disabled Warlpiri man from Yuendumu with “special needs”, died following his forceful arrest and restraint by two off-duty NT Police Officers inside Coles Supermarket, Alice Springs.

One of those policemen was Police Prosecutor and long-term officer Steven Haig, who had only four months before received complaints about his forceful arrest of a young Indigenous woman, remarkably at the same supermarket. There has even been published a photograph of Sergeant Haig in the process of “arresting” the Indigenous woman, which shows him with his right leg and knee over the neck area of his arrestee. Further, he has apparently been the subject of previous complaints concerning “use of force” and other matters.

This latest death occurred two weeks before the publication date of the NT Coroner’s Findings in the gargantuan Coronial Inquest into the death of 19-year-old Warlpiri man, Kumanjayi Walker, who was shot dead while being arrested by Northern Territory Police in Yuendumu on the 9th of November 2019. In acceptance of the families’ request, in view of the latest tragedy, the Coroner has announced that her Findings will now be published on July 7, “either in Yuendumu or Alice Springs, depending on the views of the community.” A reasonable and appropriate decision one would think.

As the investigation begins, and before the Coronial Inquest occurs, the immediate family and Warlpiri community have requested an independent Investigation, one with no connections to the NTPF, to conduct what will be an important and complex investigation.

Their request has, to a degree, been supported by the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, NT Senator Malarndirri McCarthy. Academics, Professor Thalia Anthony, other Aboriginal spokespersons and other Human Rights bodies have also supported the request. However, the request has been rejected by Acting Police Commissioner Martin Dole who has been supported by NT Chief Minister Finocchiaro who stated; “we also stand in solidarity with our police and the security personnel involved in this incident and incidents right across the NT.”

In the circumstances, one can well understand why the Warlpiri community and the NT Indigenous people generally have little, if any, trust in the NTPF conducting a “transparent” and “objective” investigation into Kumanjayi White’s cause and manner of death. This is based on the troubled history of Police relations with Indigenous people including their investigatory work relating to Indigenous people dying in custody and in suspicious circumstances.

The actions of these two NT police officers could be criminal and could lead to them being charged with criminal offences. At this stage we just don’t know.

That will hinge on what the evidence gathered establishes as to the actions of the deceased, the actions of the security officers, the police officers’ actions and the Pathologist’s opinion as to the deceased’s cause of death. It will also depend on what the body worn footage from the security officers reveals, eyewitness accounts, the total forensic evidence plus determining the level of force applied and the relevant times in play, which will then reveal the cause and manner of death and what, if any, criminal responsibility flows.

The gathering of that evidence clearly needs to be done by independent Investigators who have no perceivable or actual bias towards the NT Police Force.

Experienced, highly qualified professional investigators with no connection to the NTPF are absolutely essential here if justice, the ultimate aim, is ever to be achieved. There is simply no way in 2025 that this can be achieved by any branch of the NTPF. The trust required for that to occur no longer exists. It is long gone.

History, plus the NTPF actions to date since Kumunjayi White’s death render them now inappropriate to conduct the investigation. This is an important threshold question, politically and legally. It is a fundamental issue of conflict which cannot be simply brushed aside by Dole’s “rejection” and his spurious reasons for the same.

If the NTPF do the investigation, it will poison, at least in perception, the resultant Coronial Inquiry. In my opinion, any Coronial Inquiry will be of limited worth if the evidence that it’s to rely on is gathered by the NTPF.

Historical Reasons

The history of many NT police investigations into cases involving “suspicious” Indigenous deaths and deaths in custody reveal inadequate and incompetent police work. Of course most of those cases now lie in the graveyard of history buried and forgotten. But not by the Indigenous families and communities concerned.

To name a couple (and there are many more) there was the “inept” distressful and disgraceful NT Police Investigation into the 8-year-old Indigenous boy K.R. who, in 2007, was found drowned in a waterhole just outside Borroloola where he lived. Initially the police concluded it was an accident. This was despite the fact his pockets had been filled with plate-sized rocks, he had abrasions on the top and back of his head and there were tracks of K and an adult leading to the waterhole. Not to mention K’s notorious shyness towards water.

Based on the Police concluding it was an accident there was no criminal investigation just a Coronial File to compile which took over three years to complete. That’s how that was done by the NTPF and of course that case is now forgotten by most of the NT community because that is how it works. But not for the boy’s family and the Aboriginal Community of Borroloola. They believed from the very beginning and based on the evidence outlined above that the boy was murdered.

Similarly, and there really are many more, the NTPF investigation into the death of 25-year-old Indigenous woman Sasha Green who died in Tennant Creek in 2013 from a knife wound to her femoral artery. The death was in all likelihood a homicide committed by her then partner during a drunken argument. The police after a woeful investigation concluded, despite there being no history of self-harm, that it was suicide.

The Inquest was eventually held in Tennant Creek in 2017-18, four years after the actual death. The Coroner, Mr Cavenagh, was blistering in his criticisms of the “investigation”. He found it to be “botched”, “incompetent” and one that took an “inordinate amount of time”.

Sasha’s parents were devastated by the lack of interest and effort put into the killing of their daughter. Ultimately they received the usual “condolences” and “apology” from, then Assistant Commissioner Michael Murphy, who was summonsed by the Coroner to the Tenant Creek Coronial Court to try and explain away, without success, the gross incompetence of the Northern Territory police investigation.

NTPF Actions so far

The NT Police Force’s conduct in regards to updating the public on the death has already strongly suggested actual as well as perceived bias in their approach. The major face and voice of the NTPF’s endeavour so far has been Assistant Commissioner Travis Wurst. He has appeared with updates at media pressers informing the media and the nation about the event based on what he apparently knows.

He has also assured everyone, including the deceased’s family, the NT Indigenous community and the rest of the country that the police are investigating this death with an “objective lens”. The problem is Assistant Commissioner Wurst has been very selective in his words outlining his updates. So selective that he has given any fair-minded person watching this a reasonable view that he is biased in favour of his fellow NT Police officers.

Immediately following the event which was at lunchtime on May 27, 2025 the media had picked up eyewitness accounts to this incident. In one ABC report it was described thus by an eye witness; “they saw a big white man grabbing an Aboriginal man in some sort of hold. I’m not sure what it was, like I can’t be sure, but it looked pretty violent and then they slammed him to the ground”. Other eyewitnesses have described to the public via the media that some shoppers heard the police officers involved say; “stop resisting”. Also, that some customers yelled at the policemen to stop. They say that they heard the deceased yelling out; “Mama! Mama!”.

Assistant Commissioner Wurst tells the media that “his thoughts are with the family” and he “offers them his condolences”. His account, as to what happened, was necessarily selective.

But not neutral. He chose to tell the media that the deceased “assaulted the security officer”; the off-duty police officers intervened, and the deceased was “taken to ground”. He also then chose to tell the media that shortly before the “supermarket incident” there was another “incident” in the street outside the Commonwealth Bank in which the deceased was seen to hit a woman on the back.

He then asked for witnesses to that event to come forward and assist the police. What he chose to not tell the media was the narrative that the above eyewitnesses had described or what he undoubtedly knew about Sergeant Haig and the “other incident” of forceful arrest involving him and an Indigenous female four months previously in the same supermarket.

On that alone I’m sure the family are offended, hurt and angry that at such a distressing time the NT Police Force are giving out information which horribly besmirches their deceased son. In the same update he then tells us he will oversee this police investigation and coordinate the same with the Professional Integrity Unit. Whatever that means.

From my experience this so classically describes yet another day in the life of an NT Indigenous person. Promises, assurances, condolences, undertakings which are all, by virtue of previous failures, worthless and now a biased version of the tragedy from the senior police officer who is actually going to head up this investigation.

Conclusion

In my view from experience, the NT Police decision to insist on investigating this matter couldn’t be more inappropriate. No doubt it will now rely on the majority of people forgetting the relevant history and elected politicians addressing this tragedy based on their own political imperatives.

The NTPF decision to reject the family and communities’ request is hard-headed and unjustified. The reasons given on June 2, by Commissioner Dole as to forensic compromises are spurious. This attitude, needless to say supported by the NT CLP Government, compounds the atrocious relations between the NTPF, the Government and the Territory Indigenous Community.

It confirms and compounds their distrust. If they persist in being hard-headed about this, the Federal Government could order the NT Police Force to step aside and allow a unit of qualified experienced and independent investigators from the Victorian Police to take over the commenced Investigation to its completion. This will satisfy all citizens that the matter will be properly and objectively investigated thus allowing the proper decisions to be made based on that evidence which should achieve justice from this tragic situation.

John Lawrence first started in the Territory in 1987 as a Crown Prosecutor, five years later becoming the Solicitor in Charge of NAALAS, now NAAJA. He later joined the Independent Bar where he has remained for 28 years. He was appointed Senior Counsel in 2010 and has featured in many high-profile cases, including several Royal Commissions of Inquiry. He has served as President of the NT Bar Association as well as the Criminal Lawyer’s Association NT (CLANT) and as a Director of the Law Council of Australia.

John has written numerous articles for various national publications over the years, mostly on justice issues. He has been a passionate advocate for human rights, the rule of law and the rights of all Territorians having spent a large part of his career representing Indigenous people and organisations in their struggle against disadvantage and injustice.

His regualr column for the NT Independent is called Se Acabo. John has witnessed how the NT has developed over the last 38 years and pulls no punches in his assessment of our current problems.