As it happens, I wrote a book called Coniston, about the last recorded massacre of Aboriginal people in Australia in 1928.
The killings took place north-west of Alice Springs. The victims (by my estimate, 100 to 200) were mainly Warlpiri people. The perpetrators of the massacre, which played out over months and included numerous mass shootings, were led by Mounted Constable George Murray of the Central Australia Police.
Shortly before the book’s launch in November 2019, Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead by Constable Zachary Rolfe of the Northern Territory Police. Walker was a Warlpiri man. I said that I hoped, this time, justice would be done.
Walker died at Yuendumu.
In 1928, a Warlpiri man called Kamalyarrpa Japanangka, known as “Bullfrog”, was widely known among Aboriginal people as the main instigator in the murder of a dingo trapper called Fred Brooks. Brooks’ killing was the trigger for the reprisal massacres that followed.
Bullfrog escaped the manhunt and eventually settled in Yuendumu where he lived until his death in the 1970s.
As we know, last week Rolfe was acquitted by a jury of Walker’s murder, and that is that. His defence was self-defence, and that is that.
In the 91 years between Coniston and Walker’s death, not a single Australian police officer has been convicted of the murder of an Indigenous Australian. In the 140 years between the First Fleet and Coniston, not a single Australian police officer was convicted either.
The Coniston murderers, including Murray, were exonerated. Self-defence was the official verdict for each of the 31 shooting deaths they had admitted (including two Aboriginal victims who, on Murray’s own evidence, had been shot in the back, and a number of women who he said were unfortunately hit by stray bullets).
In 234 years, no convictions. Should Rolfe pay the price for all that injustice and thousands of unpunished murders? Of course not. Of course, also, those who prefer not to listen only hear that that is what Walker’s family and people demanded. They did not.
In the aftermath of this latest wrenching trauma for First Nations people, the same old pantomime unfolds.
The documentary on Rolfe’s life and times: “I honestly have not witnessed racism among my colleagues during my time policing,” he says with a dead straight face.
“The unwanted baby who became a violent abuser: Kumanjayi Walker’s tragic life before he was shot” screams the headline in The Australian, to an article documenting every last detail of Walker’s troubled existence, published with the po-face of the righteous, indignant should anyone point to what it is: victim-blaming racism.
Am I being unfair? The Australian published a lot of articles about the man who massacred 51 Muslims in Christchurch. The nastiest headline I could find on any of them was this: “Gunman Tarrant’s racist beliefs bred during European travels”. So, like I said: racism.
Andrew Bolt pounces into print, calling for the resignation of the NT police chief for the outrage that was perpetrated on Rolfe: “Rolfe was charged with murder because he was white. This was the new racism of the left.
“It seems a white policeman may never shoot a violent black offender attacking him without being accused of racism and murder … Justice in this country hangs by a thread.”
Aboriginal people know this landscape too well. It’s the three-card trick of Australian racism: ignore the intergenerational consequences of invasion, murder, dispossession and discrimination; blame the victim for his own disadvantage, laying the subtle groundwork of justification; exonerate the white population, the not-racist country we totally are and have always been.
Yes it is true that Walker resisted arrest with violence, and that there was confusion and no doubt fear in that room where he was shot three times in rapid succession, and that the foundation for reasonable doubt could arguably be (in fact was) found.
It isn’t the point.
The point is that Black lives keep being extinguished. The point is that so often those lives end in police custody or prisons. The point is that if you were an Aboriginal person you would be staring wide-eyed at the fact that nobody has ever been found to have taken even one of those lives with intent. And you would be saying that that cannot be right.
It cannot be right because it isn’t. Our country’s heart remains dark, stained by blood. Unaccounted. Our shame.
Justice in this country hangs by a thread.
Yes, the usual whitewash. Little attention seems to have been paid to the instructions given to the police. Rolfe and his group were told to carry out the arrest early morning, when the victim was most likely asleep. Rolf apparently decided otherwise, and moved in early evening, making the likelihood of violence far more possible. He had been enraged by a video of a previous altercation with the victim. And, another unnecessary aboriginal death ensued. The balance of proportional response for the so-called crime did not exist. We march blindly forward towards the US police fascist state, based on racism, and power imbalance.
You’re picking and choosing what information you use there mate. The only information in the “arrest plan” was to attempt an arrest at 5 am, no other information like where to find walker. So the plan was to go talking to the locals about where walker was and if they ran into him, arrest him.
You claim the response wasn’t proportionate, yet we have a violent offender who attacked police unprovoked with a deadly weapon.
A deadly weapon? These are the type of blunt scissors primary school children use to cut up paper and cardboard. Are you suggesting school children are given ‘deadly weapons’ by their teachers?
Yes scissors are deadly, why do you think we teach children not to run with them? However the scissors in question was a pair of medical scissors which he’d stolen from the nurses station (that event being why the nurses were evaluated), that the medical experts stated were lethal. They were clearly sharp enough to cut rolfe to the bone.
The only ME who claimed otherwise prefaced her statement that she wasn’t qualified to give that evidence and changed her position on cross given her original testimony had been given from incomplete evidence including not having seen the scissors or being informed that they had been used to stab someone.
What’s that old motto, “Don’t bring snub ended scissors to confront two armed thugs in uniform“?
Something like that… I think.
The debate on the guilt or innocence of any person should not be decided by the appalling treatment of the group, club, or indigenous or first nation people.I believe the treatment of our first nation from Cooks landing to today has been a national disgrace and. we continue our disgraceful behavior.
I realise I am about to be massively downvoted by people who like myself did not hear the evidence presented to the court .
Before you vote I would like to ask you have you ever had to stop an adult with a weapon capable of fatally wounding you?
For those who have not, I can assure you training kicks in and you react accordingly. Three seconds does not give you time to analyse the potential of the weapon or the mental state of your attacker. Unfortunately, as long as your assailant is vertical they are a threat. You have no time to make a triage-like assessment of their capacity to kill you.
Try counting to one and then deciding if the threat to kill you no longer exists. You are not a doctor if a one-second triage is beyond your skill level or expertise I can assure you you will continue to fire . At this stage, you are not checking the person’s weapon to see how sharp it is, its life or death for you or your adversary .Its not a cowboy show and you do not aim to disable by shooting in the leg or shooting the assailant’s weapon you aim for the chest, you aim to kill.
When a person threatens the life of another in war or in society and the threatened person is trained to assess and react that person is likely to die.
Ask any police officer or ADF member for their opinion. Let’s not attempt to place the 200 years of aboriginal abuse on one man if you were not in the courtroom.
If you wish to vote me down have the courage to voice your opinion
Here’s a tip – it’s easy to stay out of trouble by avoiding aggro types.
They are readily identifiable because they, mostly, wear uniforms and carry weapons – legally if not ethically or morally.
Give those weirdos a wide berth and things will be much healthier.
Unfortunately, there is a difference between the real world and utopia it is called reality .
Continue to complain, but at some time please leave your utopia and help make Australia a better place for all rather than look for a scapegoat to offload your disappointment in life as it is according to you
You are laying blame far & wide on putative scapegoats for what is a basic failure of personal responsibility.
Part of the problem is in the nature of policeman. Speaking generally police, like prison guards and military people, tend to be conservative in nature and come with all that that implies in varying degrees. So expect pretty ingrained racism, disparagement of womens issues, white supremacy and hostility to anyone who doesnt present like them.
This means normal police are absolutely the wrong people to deal with indigineous people because of their ingrained hostility and perceptions of supremacy.
One good thing that could come from this is that police could be banned from taking their guns into aboriginal communities.
Doubtful though because the aboriginals themselves have a smattering of guns in cummunities, all kept in locked up cabinets and strictly according to the law. There has never been a case of any aboriginal misusing a firearm in a community but the police will use this to keep their guns, more aboriginals will die and still no police officer will be convicted of murder.
Sad.
I have stood and observed the behaviour of police towards Indigenous in Brisbane’s West End. Your descriptions of their personalities, and ingrained racism seems accurate based on what I saw.
That’s a bit rough to characterise all Prison Officers, Police and Military as having “pretty ingrained racism, disparagement of womens issues, white supremacy and hostility to anyone who doesnt present like them” . Racism is usually acquired from someone’s Parents and others during childhood or via multiple negative experiences with certain races. If you think “the Left” doesn’t display all of the above you are very much mistaken. I live in a rusted on ALP Electorate and I can assure you that everything you have stated is equally applicable to members of “the Left”. That is a sweeping generalization to say the least.
These jobs are essential and not easy. The Prison Officers and Police spend all their careers dealing with low life individuals. Offenders are violent quite often but particularly when alcohol or drugs are involved. I have watched them attack Ambulance Officers simply for treating their wounded victims (including one memorable occasion where the offender picked on the wrong Ambulance Officer). They have to operate on the basis of hope for the best but expect and plan for the worst. Interesting how a lot of people hate police until they actually need one.
As to the Military, they do an essential job also and most spend their careers training for a job they hope they never have to do. Given the treatment they often receive by the public after they actually do their job, is one contributing factor into why their is such a high suicide rate amongst Veterans. They do not deserve to be described in such a manner nor treated as they are particularly by people who have never done their jobs and experienced what they have.
Describing the ALP as “the Left” is complete hogwash.
Well said.
Two words DRUGS and ALCHOHOL.These are the mind destroyers in first nation and we the immigrant communities. We have a majority of crimes now being committed by offenders under the influence of one or both .
You can not reason with most of the offenders who are of their heads . They will often arm themselves and this is a far too common problem young police officers face .
And there we have it – as noted above, beware the Underclass!
Coming to take your hard won gains, however obtained, mean & paltry.
Very obvious you have experienced some very traumatic incident at the hands of a person in uniform and or authority. I would very much like to hear about this experience to help me understand your position
Not only rough but shows signs of extremism that we do not need .We need a collegiate approach to a 200 year old problem .Very easy to scapegoat one particular group and then sit back and say not my fault.
The local police, like in previous instances with Mr Walker, would have been much more understanding and culturally aware. Not the ex-soldier with a compulsion to test out his glock on an incapacitated teenager.
I think your comment would be improved Michael by being respectful enough to use capital letters when referring to Aboriginals. Otherwise, good comment.
Nah mate. Just respectful.
I’ve just completed a book on lethal force and its use by police, focused on Aotearoa New Zealand. As a former police officer, and now someone with an author’s interest in police use of lethal force, what happened in the Rolfe case is all too familiar. Police enter the vast majority of situations where they use lethal force with what I term ‘tactical superiority’ over those they are interacting with. They are trained, equipped, armed and resourced (vehicles, radios, support units) better than their ‘opponent’ and they numerically out number their ‘opponent’. Yet, through poor planning, poor tactical decision-making, poor command and control and sometimes poor personal discipline they put themselves into a position where use of a firearm is needed to extract themselves. And, the laws on self defence – designed for everyone in society – provide an almost unassailable exit for those same police, taking no regard of their inherent tactical superiority. So, once more, a dead man (mostly they are men, occasionally a woman), a police officer (mostly men, occasionally a woman) whose career is impacted (often terminally, sooner or later), and a wide circle of grieving and soul searching on all sides. No winners.
If one chose to go back to basics, the state is defined by its near monopoly on the means of coercion, whether at Law or by organised violence.
It’s an ancient formula.
I have often thought that a study on police shootings that nearly happened, but didn’t, would be enlightening. What stayed the officer’s hand? What was their prior training and did it help? Did they have a particular personality type which helped them make that decision?
Agreed, there is no doubt great insights to be found in such data.
Ok, so can you go and write another book? 🙂
Police should enter a vast majority of situations with tactical superiority – that is what policing is about . – I don’t know anyone trained who would enter a situation tactically inferior – those who do should be sacked as they are not doing the job they are paid to do – keep the social peace, and they interact daily with the violent people of our society .
Alas, the acquittal of Rolfe will only encourage more deaths of this type. It is extraordinary that a court would have found a reasonable doubt existed in circumstances when 3 bullets were fired in response to a resistant black wielding a pair of scissors. And what would a NT court have found if it were a black man who had shot a white guy in the same circumstances . Seriously.
If by encourage you mean that police will feel more empowered to shoot indigenous people, I don’t think that’s true. No police officer gets up in the morning and thinks ‘I feel like shooting someone today’. Police don’t actually like taking lives. Very few people do. In the heat of any moment, no-one is thinking ‘I can do this because another officer did this and got off’, just as murderers aren’t thinking ‘I shouldn’t do this because I might go to jail for life’. It’s just not that easy and people aren’t that simple.
Your record of clairvoyance is well know from past posts.
Rolfe had previous form, suggesting racial bias. His team were instructed to enter the home early morning when the victim was likely asleep. Instead, they went mid evening, when the likelhood of some push back was enhanced. A self fulfilling outcome for Rolfe, I’d say, and not even a manslaughter conviction. Amazing.
What happened to learning deescalation techniques? Standing back and calming someone down The police would have to learn these if they were barred from carrying guns in aboriginal communities. They’d have to learn to get along with people rather than hide behind a weapon.
Most police walk into an unknown situation and are put at risk thereby creating a heightened state of alert. Deescalation techniques are all well and good but some people won’t “deescalate” and attacking and injuring a police officer, as well as background on this individual, indicate that he was a violent criminal and certainly no angel. Police have families too. If everyone complied with lawful Police directions there would be a lot less criminals shot.
And if nobody broke the law, there’d be no need for police at all! Meanwhile, we deal with the situation as it is. Deescalation would seem to be the best first option. And why was the arrest apparently carried out in darkness? It makes for fear and confusion all round.
Would have been covered off in the trial I’m sure. Many facts of Jury trials don’t make it into the “News” (how could you spin the story one way or the other if just facts were reported?) The Accused was charged, had his day in court and found innocent. Whether you agree with the verdict or not, justice has been done as per our Justice system.
If he hadn’t gone through our Judicial process then you have a right to complain.
The police managed to stop a white man running amuck in Darwin who killed four people, and without killing him.
And why three bullets? And what about the other aboriginal man shot 6 times(!) by the police, in Palmerston, I think. (I think he is still alive.).
Who knows without reviewing actual Court transcripts and evidence? You can’t just believe what you read. You will find the last 2 bullets of the three were an extremely short time apart and the weapon was semi-automatic so not hard to do accidentally under duress.
Haven’t heard about Palmerton but there is, sadly, a very large problem with violence, sexual abuse, alcohol and drugs in remote Aboriginal Communities.
Sometimes a single bullet, or even 2 or 3 or more may not slow the offender down if alcohol or drugs are involved (particularly if the offender is large).
Rolfe was not under duress. His partner was on top of Mr Walker, subduing him when Rolfe fired shot two and three. The body cam footage shows it all.
A lot is spent on law enforcement rather than on capacity building. Like taking flood prevention measures to minimise damage rather than spending a whole lot more on cleanup and rebuilding, money spent on building communities would over time reduce the bill for law enforcement.
I agree but there are cultural issues at play as well. It would take a huge project across multiple communities to create not only the infrastructure but the education, social structure and economic capability for these Remote Communities. Most of this has been going on for decades and is ingrained.
Stolen Generations, massacres, dispossession of their land, treated as sub-human, Yes, there are few things that have been forgoing on for a couple of centuries and the programs to help redress these are fragmented, administered by people who don’t know aboriginal culture, millions wasted on inappropriate and short-term programs devised without aboriginal involvement. What’s there not to like?
The Police Officer was not charged with the appalling way our nation has treated our first nation people
Remember until 1967 our first nation people were not classed in the census as human .Was he responsible for that too?
A semi automatic weapon, such as a police issue Glock, requires separate trigger pulls.
Surely the first splatter alone would have suggested to anyone not on an adrenaline high that the outcome had been achieved?
Cordite has an unfortunate analogue effect to pheromones in the susceptible.
The trigger pulls on a Glock or any other semi-automatic handgun don’t require a lot of effort particularly in the heat of the moment and under duress. Most handguns (including the Glock) come set at 2.5 Kg of pressure at the Trigger to fire but can be made lighter or heavier. Quite possible to fire rapidly without meaning to and to fire 2 rounds in a second.
Regardless, the Court and a Jury have ruled so it doesn’t matter what you or I think. Unless you have the Court transcripts and directions to the Jury, you only think you know what happened.
So, persiflage aside, you agree he pulled the trigger three, separate times.
Old saying lexusaussie .The only way to argue with the ignorant is to sink to their level of understanding of reality .
Great summary .Easy to see how the KKK was able to scatch a nerve and then become a racist mob.Mobs white our non-white seem to attract a certain type of person
For the most part, the local cops do de-escalate and have better cultural awareness and understanding, e.g. the previous altercation where Mr Walker was brandishing a tomahawk. This Rolfe fella was not a local