A Northern Territory police officer in Yuendumu on the night Kumanjayi Walker died was "scared of a mob of community members potentially driving through the doors of the police station, storming the police station and going for firearms", a coronial inquest has heard.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, used with the permission of their family.
Now-sergeant Christopher Hand was questioned about the police decision not to inform Mr Walker’s family he had passed away, as a group gathered outside the station after he was shot by Constable Zachary Rolfe.
Constable Rolfe was found not guilty of all charges relating to his death.
A three-month inquest is underway in Alice Springs and on Tuesday, Sergeant Hand was questioned about the hours that immediately followed his death.
The officer said the decision not to keep Mr Walker's family informed about his condition came from "higher up" in the police command and was not made by officers in the community.
He also told the coroner he feared "cultural payback" from the community over Mr Walker's death and that he encouraged the officer in charge to request additional police support.
The coroner heard that in his experience, "when a certain level of force is used by police, that escalates the tension and anger in the community".
"Although I hadn't been involved in a police shooting on an Indigenous community, I have experienced times where, if the community don't like the way we're doing our job and particularly with an arrest, perhaps we have to have to wrestle with someone," he said.
NAAJA's counsel, Julian Murphy, put to Sergeant Hand that what he was referring to was not cultural payback – which the coroner heard is aligned with restorative justice – and instead more akin to "revenge".
The court heard Sergeant Hand also worried that alcohol might contribute to people's behaviour on the night of Mr Walker's death, however conceded he had no information to say anyone in the community was intoxicated at the time.
The officer agreed with the statement that he was – among other things — "scared [of] a mob of community members potentially driving through the doors of the police station, storming the police station, and going for firearms".
Under cross-examination Sergeant Hand conceded that, to his knowledge, this had never previously happened.
Objections raised to 'brutal racial violence' report
Counsel Assisting the coroner, Patrick Coleridge, asked Sergeant Hand about a report – now the subject of several legal objections – which he said found Mr Walker died as a result of "brutal, structural, racial violence" perpetrated by Northern Territory government agents.
The coroner heard lawyers for both police and health have raised objections to the report being included in proceedings.
Provided by the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA), the coroner heard the report concluded that the way police dealt with community in the hours after the shooting reflected "systemic-racism".
The report, the coroner heard, found that police "over-exaggerated" the "threat posed [to them] … by the community following the shooting".
Mr Coleridge said he referred to the documents to "contextualise" his line of questioning.
In response to the report's allegation, Sergeant Hand told the coroner he drew on his "experience working [in Yuendumu]" to assess the situation facing police after the shooting, "knowing cultural payback [occurred] within the community when there is a homicide of an Indigenous person from another Indigenous person".
'Upsetting' to think of family left in the dark
Mr Walker died at the Yuendumu police station just after 8:30pm that night, while members of his family waited outside.
In earlier evidence from Mr Walker's family, including Aboriginal community police officer Derek Williams, the coroner heard they were not informed of his death until the following day.
Gerard Mullins, counsel for the Brown family, asked Sergeant Hand how he thought Mr Walker's family felt knowing that "their son, nephew, grandson, brother … had died in the police station, and they didn't even know?"
Sergeant Hand said it was "upsetting" to him and that he could understand "how hurt and upset the family [was], in particular Derek Williams".
Nurses targeted
The court was also shown images for the first time of damage suffered by the Yuendumu clinic staff housing around the time of the shooting.
A home and personal cars of community nurses were broken into, the court heard, before staff were evacuated hours before Mr Walker was shot.
Yesterday the inquest heard that a rock was thrown at an ambulance, striking a nurse who had travelled to Yuendumu from a nearby community to assist after the shooting.
"I was told a rock was thrown through the window and struck the nurse in the head, and she had a cut to her forehead, temple area," Sergeant Hand told the coroner.
"There was certainly a lot of rocks being thrown into the compound at the police station."
