Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe has told his murder trial he was trained to shoot assailants armed with edged weapons until they are incapacitated "no matter how many rounds that takes".
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.
Constable Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murder, as well as two alternative charges, over the fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker in the central Australian community of Yuendumu in 2019.
The officer fired his Glock pistol three times after Mr Walker, 19, stabbed him in the shoulder with a pair of medical scissors during an attempted arrest on Saturday, November 9.
He is charged over the second and third shots, which the prosecution says were not legally justified.
After the prosecution concluded its case on Wednesday, Constable Rolfe took the stand in the NT Supreme Court.
Under questioning from his defence barrister, he told the court police training dictated that officers should draw and be prepared to use their firearm whenever threatened with an edged weapon.
Constable Rolfe said he first became aware of Mr Walker on the Thursday before the shooting, when he was told Mr Walker had threatened Yuendumu officers with an axe when they sought to arrest him for breaching a court order.
Constable Rolfe accessed body-worn camera footage of the incident, which he said showed officers freezing in "an extremely potentially deadly situation."
He told the court he was concerned that Alice Springs-based officers had not been alerted to the axe incident by senior management.
"From my reading of ... the initial job write-up, it seemed to me that this incident ... was being swept under the rug," he said.
Constable Rolfe said residents often travelled between Yuendumu and Alice Springs and that "it seemed that this is the kind of incident that we should all be alerted to.
"This offender was potentially a risk to Alice Springs members."
He said based on the body-worn camera footage, and Mr Walker's criminal history — which he looked up on a police database — he formed a view about Mr Walker's propensity to violence.
"I characterised him as a high-risk offender, extremely violent, who was willing to use potentially lethal weapons against police," he told the court.
Deployed to Yuendumu 'to arrest Kumanjayi Walker'
Constable Rolfe said he and about six other officers went to look for Mr Walker at the Warlpiri town camp in Alice Springs on the Thursday afternoon, but he was not located.
Two days later, on the Saturday, he said he received a call from a supervisor, who told him that he and three other members of a specialist police unit known as the Immediate Response Team (IRT) were being deployed to Yuendumu to arrest Mr Walker.
The prosecution has previously told the court the IRT was deployed to provide support to fatigued officers in Yuendumu, and to assist with the arrest of Mr Walker early the next morning.
Prior to leaving Alice Springs, Mr Rolfe said he briefed the other IRT members about their mission.
"Our task was to travel to Yuendumu to arrest Kumanjayi Walker for the reasons of the axe incident on Wednesday night," he said.
He said he showed the body-worn camera footage of the axe incident to two of the IRT members who had not seen it.
During the three-hour drive to the remote community, he told the court he had recalled a brief conversation with another officer.
"The only comment that I can recall myself making is that 'We should’ve been sent out earlier', as in, days earlier, not hours earlier on that day," Constable Rolfe said.
The defence is yet to ask Constable Rolfe about what happened after his arrival in the community, which he said was at 6.30pm.
Constable Rolfe will continue being examined by the defence tomorrow, after which he is expected to be cross-examined by the prosecution.
