A plan to station more police officers in remote parts of the Northern Territory is a “direct threat” to the safety of Aboriginal people, Warlpiri elders have said.
Northern Territory police minister Nicole Manison on Thursday announced that spending on police and emergency services in the 2022 budget would be increased to a record $510m, including $10.1m to fund an additional 21 police officers and 30 Aboriginal liaison officers in regional and remote areas.
It comes two months after Northern Territory police officer Zachery Rolfe was found not guilty of murder over the fatal shooting of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker. Walker was shot in the remote community of Yuendumu in 2019.
Warlpiri elders from Yuendumu have issued a statement calling for police to stop carrying guns in Aboriginal communities, and said the police budget would be better directed at self-determined Aboriginal governance rather than further police oversight.
“This funding increase is a direct threat to our lives in our community.” senior Warlpiri elder, Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, said.
“More funding for police means more police violence against our people. Karrinjarla muwajarri! This must stop! We demand a police ceasefire! No more police guns. The only safe way forward for our people is for our local First Nations authority to be empowered and for funding to go to our community controlled services.”
Manison said investing in more Aboriginal police liaison officers would build stronger relationships with remote communities.
“We know that maintaining local relationships and engagements is vital for our police and this investment is an important step in increasing safety out in our communities,” she said. “We will always back our police and the complex work that they do right across the Territory, in some of the most remote regions in the country.”
The Yuendumu community has called for a national day of action on 18 June to end police shootings.
It is supported by the Human Rights Law Centre, which said that the voices of elders and community members at Yuendumu should play a central role in the steps taken by the Territory government to restore the broken trust in the justice system.
“Yuendumu community has started the conversation about what is needed to address the systemic injustices faced by Aboriginal people,” legal director Nick Espie said.
According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, six of the 16 deaths in police custody in 2020-2021 were the result of police shootings. All were non-Indigenous people.
In the year Walker died, 2019-2020, there were 16 fatal police shootings, two of which resulted in the death of an Indigenous person.
