The sergeant in charge of the Yuendumu police station at the time of Kumanjayi Walker’s death has told an inquest she was unaware specialist police officers would be carrying AR-15 assault rifles around in the community.
Walker, 19, was shot three times by Northern Territory police Const Zachary Rolfe during an attempted arrest by the immediate response team (IRT) in the remote community in November 2019.
Rolfe was found not guilty of murder earlier this year.
The inquest heard the response team was carrying two AR-15 assault rifles and a beanbag gun that fires non-lethal projectiles, and had police dogs with them when they went to arrest Walker.
Sgt Julie Frost told the inquest on Friday that she knew the officers would be carrying those weapons because they were listed in a briefing email she received before they entered the community. But Frost said she didn’t think they would have the weapons on them while walking around the community. Under cross-examination she agreed that, in hindsight, carrying those weapons could be seen as confrontational and threatening.
In response to questions from Julian Murphy, counsel for the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, which has been given special leave to appear at the inquest to represent the broader Aboriginal community in the NT, Frost said she should have discussed what guns were being carried around the community.
“In hindsight, it wasn’t a great idea, because of the fact that they actually did carry them on that day in the community,” she said.
Frost began giving evidence on Wednesday. She told the court on Wednesday that she did not know the IRT members would be carrying “long arms” into the community and said it would have been confronting to see officers “brandishing” such weapons on the day of the shooting.
“It’s very threatening,” she said. “It’s not necessary to carry that type of weapon in a community. It would be very confronting for community members to see that.”
Frost told the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage, that while she did not believe “town police” would be more likely to use force, remote community police officers rarely used force because they feared community reaction.
She said there was a disconnect between “bush police”, or those stationed in remote communities, and police from larger towns.
“I don’t think town police or certainly the town police that have never worked out bush – I don’t think they understand the repercussions of using any level of force in the bush,” Frost said.
“Community police are very reluctant to use any level of force because we understand the repercussions of doing so.
“But I didn’t think the Alice Springs police would [have] used force either if we had enough resources or if we had a good arrest plan put in place – I didn’t think that we needed to resort to any level of force.”
Frost also told the inquest that one of the reasons an ambulance was dispatched to pick up medical staff from the airport following the shooting was to give the community “hope”.
Frost told Murphy the ambulance was used because a large vehicle was required to carry all of the police officers’ equipment and additional personnel but added the reason for using it was “two-fold”.
“There was some level of hope, I would think, that the ambulance going out there might make the community feel comfortable knowing that perhaps a doctor was coming on board as well,” she said.
But Frost denied the ambulance was intended to mislead the community into believing Walker was still alive.
“I knew that the members would have swags and equipment and luggage … so I needed enough vehicle space to be able to house everyone,” she said.
The inquest is expected to run until November.
