An inquest into the police shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker has heard that Zachary Rolfe, the constable acquitted of his murder, was involved in text message exchanges in which officers described Aboriginal people as “losers”, “grubby fucks”, “coons” and “niggas”, and discussed using force to “towel them up”.
Walker, 19, was shot three times by Rolfe during an attempted arrest in the remote Northern Territory community of Yuendumu in November 2019. Rolfe was found not guilty of murder and two alternative charges after a six-week trial in the NT supreme court in Darwin earlier this year.
A three-month inquest is examining the events surrounding the Warlpiri man’s death.
In the texts read out on Wednesday at the inquest in Alice Springs, Rolfe told another officer local people were “neanderthals who drink too much alcohol” and that he had a “licence to towel up the locals”.
“I like it,” he texted.
At one point during the session, angry shouting was heard outside the court as counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer, read the contents of the messages.
Dwyer was reading the messages to Sgt Anne Jolley, who has spent 16 years in the NT police force, several of them as a community or “bush” police officer at Yuendumu.
Jolley said she was shocked, and found the messages “racist” and “disgusting”.
Dwyer read out several exchanges between Rolfe and other officers, many using foul language to describe Aboriginal people, and referring to one woman as a “dumb bitch who thinks she’s Aboriginal”.
Rolfe told a fellow officer on 10 March 2019: “I’m out at Borroloola, a random community on the coast because they’re rioting but we came up last time they did this, and smashed the whole community. So this time as soon as we arrived, they started behaving.”
Dwyer told the court that an officer texted Rolfe in July 2019: “The cops out here have fucked this town. They have been letting the niggas drink wherever they want ha ha.” To which Rolfe replied: “Bush cops are fucking shit house.”
Dwyer read yet another text message, dated 27 April 2019, describing an “exchange between a serving police officer and Constable Rolfe in which the officer said: ‘heard you had a rough arvo yesterday, grubby fucks’ and Const Rolfe replies to that officer, ‘No bra, just slightly annoying haha. Coons, man’.”
Dwyer asked Jolley: “Do you agree with me, Sergeant, that it is shocking to hear a serving member of the police force, in 2019, use that blatantly racist, disgusting term to refer to an Aboriginal person?”
Jolley said it was “disgusting”.
Dwyer continued: “The next one is from Constable Rolfe to another person where he says, and I won’t identify the person: ‘Just don’t get why all this work has got me to the point where it’s my job to look after neanderthals who drink too much alcohol haha.’
“We’ll hear from Constable Rolfe about what he was meaning to infer. But if by the use of neanderthal he’s meaning to refer to anybody who is of Aboriginal descent, do you agree that that is disgusting and disgraceful and wholly unacceptable?”
“That’s disgusting,” Jolley said.
Dwyer told the court that in September 2019 there was a text exchange in which Rolfe joked about turning his bodyworn camera away and being “dramatic” for the film.
Dwyer said: “A serving officer texted Constable Rolfe. ‘Sorry about the stress caused by losing my shit the other night. Stress you didn’t need. You sorted it well. I just had enough. He was the second person to press my button that night.’ And Constable Rolfe replied: ‘Bro, there was literally no stress about it. I’m all for that shit. I’ve done the same thing to you more than once before. I’m always ready to make my camera face the other way, and be a dramatic cunt in the film, ha ha.’ And the officer texted Constable Rolfe, ‘And the Oscar goes to’, and Constable Rolfe said ‘Ha ha’.”
Dwyer asked Jolley whether, if the officers were referring to acting for the bodyworn video, it surprised her.
“Yes,” Jolley said, adding that if an officer she was supervising did that she would be “pulling them up on it” because it was “not acceptable”.
Earlier, Dr Ian Freckleton, representing the NT police force, said the texts that were to be read to the court were a “modest number of offensive utterances” and should not be imputed to the whole police force.
“We reiterate the position which we expressed yesterday. This is not an inquiry into whether sectors of the police force have racist attitudes. We do not quibble with the proposition at all, which we understand your honour to have embraced, that such attitudes have the potential to have been relevant to actions. But it’s that connection which is really important, and we ask that it form the context for any questions that are posed.
“We do that because what is being traversed with this witness is sensational.
“It is important to note that the misimpression not be propagated that this modest number of offensive utterances by text messages be imputed to the whole police force. To do so is to run the risk of diminishing the respect in which the force is generally held, the trust that is reposed in them, and if that occurred it would be a most unfortunate outcome of this inquest.
“Those are extremely regrettable expressions that have been employed by the officers concerned and you will not hear any justification or any rationalisation of those from the Northern Territory police force. And we do represent some of those members, and you will hear from them what their views are, as to what they have communicated.
“Some of them at least will be expressing significant contrition to your honour, saying that those kinds of messages are not reflective of who they are, what their attitudes are, or both the attitudes of the force or their colleagues.”
On Tuesday, the coroner, Elisabeth Armitage, said she would consider whether racism might have played a role in Walker’s death, rejecting arguments from police legal teams that it was not sufficiently central to the investigation.
Armitage made the ruling after several days of legal argument addressing claims by lawyers for Rolfe and the NT police that issues which had been agreed on as central to proceedings should no longer be considered relevant.
Those include whether systemic racism was a factor in the incident, and whether text messages taken from Rolfe’s phone could be tendered as evidence.
