EXCLUSIVE: Kumanjayi Walker would “most likely” still be alive had NT Police followed proper training and policies in Yuendumu the night of November 9, 2019, a damning internal draft coronial report the Police Commissioner tried to suppress from the public, but obtained by the NT Independent, concluded.
EXCLUSIVE: Yuendumu officer-in-charge Sergeant Julie Frost endangered health staff with an ill-fated plan to “deceive” the community, failed to take control of the officers she requested the night Kumanjayi Walker was killed and later told officers to turn off their body-worn cameras, in breach of protocol, a damning internal draft coronial report has revealed.
EXCLUSIVE: NT Police officers in Yuendumu lied to the family of Kumanjayi Walker about his condition the night he was fatally shot and refused to provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as he lay dying in a police station, a coronial report prepared by the NT Police and obtained by the NT Independent has revealed.
EXCLUSIVE: A damning coronial report that NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker attempted to hide from the public for more than a year and a half has been obtained by the NT Independent with previous redactions lifted, that shows detectives building the murder case against Constable Zachary Rolfe ignored legal advice from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in their pursuit to lay a murder charge.
EXCLUSIVE: Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker and the DPP were aware the star witness at the murder trial of Constable Zach Rolfe had his integrity “compromised” by investigators, had involved himself in the investigation due to “pressure” exerted by unknown parties and was found not to understand the law around use of force, but they put him on the stand at the jury trial anyway, according to an internal coronial report Mr Chalker attempted to suppress ahead of the trial.
EXCLUSIVE: Constable Zach Rolfe would not have been recruited into the police force if he had been honest about his military disciplinary history, and the impact of undisclosed medication he was taking for a “psychiatric condition” in the months before shooting and killing Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu will never be known, a draft coronial report prepared by the NT Police states.
EXCLUSIVE: A draft coronial report prepared by the NT Police and obtained by the NT Independent has revealed the shocking extent of police failures in the hours before the shooting death of Yuendumu man Kumanjayi Walker in November 2019, including that two of the senior officers in charge of deploying the taskforce that raided his home did not understand how the Immediate Response Team functioned nor how it should be deployed.
ANALYSIS: The scandal engulfing Michael Gunner in the days leading up to his resignation goes to the heart of the NT’s democracy, reaching not only into the highest political office in the Territory, but also directly into the highest office in the public service.
The Office of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption did not provide promised oversight of the NT Police’s flawed investigation into the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker despite being directly requested to do so by Aboriginal elders in Yuendumu, and publicly claiming that it would, the NT Independent can reveal.
Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker and the Director of Public Prosecutions have refused to explain why an American use-of-force expert paid by police who provided evidence against Constable Zach Rolfe was used at the committal hearing but not during the Supreme Court murder trial.
EXCLUSIVE: The top cop in charge of overseeing complaints about NT Police investigations had warned officers building the murder case against Constable Zach Rolfe that their use of force “expert” Snr Sgt Andrew Barram was “not suitable” to provide evidence due to a “conflict of interest”, internal police emails obtained by the NT Independent show.
ANALYSIS: In a respectable jurisdiction, those in positions of public trust currently under investigation for the decision to charge Constable Zach Rolfe would realise they are only caretakers of those crucial positions and stand aside while the investigation is underway. But not in the NT, as we grapple with a confusing and hopelessly compromised situation.
