The Northern Territory police force is under siege. Facing low morale, reeling from the aftermath of the police shooting of Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker, under investigation for multiple allegations of racism and “military-style” conduct, as well as escalating demands and shrinking staff, the leadership is under pressure to deliver reform in an election year.
But its newest and most senior Indigenous appointment, the Arrernte lawyer Leanne Liddle, says she is ready to lead a “complete transformation” of the NT police.
About three weeks ago, Liddle started work as the executive director of the community resilience and engagement command.
Territory born and raised, Liddle was an officer in the South Australian police for more than a decade, and the architect of the NT’s groundbreaking Aboriginal Justice Agreement.
“Given the allegations of racism in the recent [Walker] coronial, it will take a huge leap of faith to gain the respect and trust of the Aboriginal and wider community,” Liddle, 54, tells Guardian Australia.
“What I know is that it doesn’t require a reset on how we do business, it needs a complete transformation.
“It will also take time. And there will be many tests that we will need to pass to recover from our current position to convince the NT and the nation that we can, and have, changed.”
It seems nobody, including the officers themselves, are happy with the NT police.
Numbers tell some of the story. According to an independent review released in March this year, the Northern Territory has an overall crime rate more than double the national average. The territory is also the most highly policed population in Australia. The NTPF operates over 1.42m sq km, servicing a population of slightly more than 250,000 people, 30% of them Indigenous, living in remote and very remote communities. There are 730 police for every 100,000 people, compared to the national average of 281. The territory police has the lowest recorded community satisfaction rate in the country. Inside the force, satisfaction is also low. It has the highest attrition rate in the nation, especially among senior officers, and is struggling to recruit and retain new officers.
The territory has the highest rates of family and domestic violence in Australia. Police receive more than 320,0000 emergency calls a year, a huge number of them for family violence. During 2022-23, the average total police time spent on domestic violence incidents was 882,000 hours. The response time has nearly doubled for priority one calls, and tripled for priority two calls over the past five years.
The review, by the former senior territory officer Vince Kelly, found police reported excessive overtime, poor morale and burnout. There was an over-reliance on the force’s “unlimited sick leave” provisions – the most generous in the country – to manage fatigue. This affected those left to manage the workload, and cost the police about 31,000 hours of overtime, or $2.5m a year. But Kelly also found that some officers are using those provisions to avoid disciplinary action.
Kelly found a service struggling to meet rising demand in the wake of a series of “deeply traumatic organisational events that has shaped and driven NTPF for over a decade”, including the police shooting of Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker in November 2019.
Const Zachary Rolfe shot Walker three times while trying to arrest him in the remote community of Yuendumu, about 300km from Alice Springs. Rolfe was found not guilty in March 2022 of charges of murder and manslaughter.
In the wake of the trial, the immediate response team, which Rolfe had been part of, was disbanded, amid concerns about the “militarisation” of the force. The police union questioned the fact Rolfe was charged at all for the shooting and said it had led to wider disillusionment within the force.
A coronial inquest into Walker’s death began in 2022. It heard damning testimony about the exchange of racist, sexist and homophobic text messages among Alice Springs officers, including those in leadership roles, as well as allegations of the use of excessive force.
Racist language ‘normalised’ inside Alice Springs station
Rolfe, who was dismissed in 2023 for disciplinary reasons, pursued legal action to avoid giving evidence at the inquest, but that bid was unsuccessful. When Rolfe appeared on the stand earlier this year, he dropped a bombshell.
He said racist language was “normalised” in the Alice Springs police station, where he heard such terms daily, and described a racist mock-award handed out in an elite policing unit, the TRG (territory response group).
Rolfe said the TRG bestowed the award – known as the “Coon of the Year” – on the officer who behaved “most like an Aboriginal”. The winner was given a club and made to wear a toga.
Other award certificates later supplied to the court included two from 2007 referring to the “Shit Barbecue award” winner who cooked “the most coon like bbq ever!!” and the Noogadah award winner “expressing [their] utmost level of Aboriginality while being an elite member of the [TRG]”.
Five current or former members of the TRG had provided statements to the court that denied such an award existed. All five officers had been serving in the unit at the time the certificates were awarded, according to information in their statements.
All of them are current high-ranking police officers, including an acting assistant commissioner and the current officer in charge of the TRG.
Rolfe alleged to the court that multiple people had lied during the inquest about not knowing about such incidents.
These allegations are under investigation by the NT Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) in Operation Beaufort. The Icac commissioner, Michael Riches, said in May that some of the material he had seen was “so offensive” he “did not consider it in the public interest that it be circulated”.
Then in May, at another inquest, it was revealed that in 2022 an Alice Springs police officer had taken a photo of a topless and unconscious Aboriginal woman and shared it to a WhatsApp group of other officers.
The inquest, into the deaths of four Aboriginal women killed by their violent partners, had been examining police responses to domestic violence. Roughly 80% of NT police work involved responding to domestic and family violence incidents, the inquest heard.
The NT police commissioner, Michael Murphy, confirmed under questioning that a sergeant in Alice Springs had taken and sent the photo to a WhatsApp group, where other officers commented on it. A member of the group reported it to the professional standards command.
An internal inquiry recommended the officer be demoted from sergeant and transferred to the town of Katherine, Murphy said.
But he rescinded that decision after the NT Police Association wrote to him, because the officer admitted to the act, and had shown contrition. Instead, the officer was transferred to Darwin and given a 12-month good behaviour bond. He was not demoted.
Murphy told the court that if he had followed through with the disciplinary action, the officer might have left the force.
“Eventually we probably would have lost him. I don’t think he would have come back to work, to be honest. We see that quite a lot in this space of disciplinary outcomes,” Murphy said.
‘Unlimited sick leave’ affecting policing
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage asked Murphy if there was an issue about how “unlimited sick leave affects your capacity to manage behaviours of your officers?”
Murphy said it was an issue “from time to time”.
“A lot of the people who use sick leave are for legitimate reasons, but there are a few that take long sick leave and it’s detrimental to the operations of the police force and impacts our delivery of service,” he said.
In 2023, there were 116 sworn officers absent on long-term personal leave or workers compensation, and 100 on return-to-work arrangements and unavailable for frontline duties. This represents about 13.3% of the sworn workforce, according to data from the Productivity Commission.
Kelly’s review recommended an additional 200 officers; 120 for frontline service in Darwin and Katherine, and 80 for specialist areas including emergency response centres. He called for upgraded infrastructure and improved housing for police in remote communities.
The NT government accepted 15 of the report’s 18 recommendations. Last month it announced a $570m boost to the police budget over the next five years.
It also announced greater support to officers in recognition of a “difficult” job, including funding up to $20,000 for relocation, housing allowances of $30,000 a year or free housing, and improved salary and shift allowances.
Commissioner Murphy has high hopes for what Liddle might achieve, saying she “will challenge the thinking and the current culture of the Northern Territory police force”.
No more ‘hollow words’
Liddle’s role includes recruitment, training and cultural reform. She hailed the “courage” of Murphy to appoint her.
“I am under no illusion and neither is he that the task will be easy or quick to deliver on the intended outcomes,” she says.
To deliver, she says, there will need to be “substantial change” in policies, processes and practices – both formal and informal. She will be looking into police complaints and how promotions are managed inside the force.
“There will be significant cultural reform – including recruiting 30% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation across the entire work of NTP – because without cultural reform people won’t feel like they fit, they won’t be happy so they won’t stay.”
Does she think the NT police has a problem with racism?
“Every agency needs to address racism in the workplace and the NT police is not exempt from this. What has been exposed in the recent coronial inquests highlights the extent and the urgent need for us to eliminate racism in all its forms.
“There is no place for any racism in any workplace and my work in the NT police will ensure we commit to work hard across the entire agency to achieve this.”
Change, she says, would “require more than hollow words … tokenistic window dressing, symbolic gestures and actions.
“The changes that the [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander] community so desperately want and need must be measurable and relevant and tangible.”
