Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe was allegedly violent during the arrests of four Aboriginal men or boys who required medical treatment in a two-year period before fatally shooting Kumanjayi Walker.
After three of the incidents he was also alleged to have falsified reports, and on one occasion was accused of asking a fellow officer to scratch him to make it appear as if he had been harmed by an offender during an arrest.
During the same period, Rolfe sent text messages describing Alice Springs as a “shit hole” like the “wild west” with “fuck all ... rules in the job really”, and saying that when he was deployed with a semi-tactical squad he got “to do cowboy stuff with no rules”.
The jury in Rolfe’s trial for murder were not told about his history within the NT police or the text messages.
Hundreds of pages of further evidence regarding Rolfe’s case were released on Friday after media outlets including the Guardian applied for the lifting of 26 suppression orders on his case. Rolfe had opposed the release of material relating to his history within the force and the text messages.
On 11 March, a jury unanimously found Rolfe not guilty of the murder of Walker, and of two alternative charges.
His defence team successfully argued prior to his trial that his alleged history within the NT police was not admissible as evidence, in part because no findings of wrongdoing had been made against Rolfe in relation to the four allegedly violent arrests, and because a judge agreed they were not directly relevant to the shooting death of Walker.
The prosecution had hoped to include the cases as what is known as tendency evidence, as they argued each incident showed Rolfe had the tendency to use excessive force when arresting men that either caused or had the potential to cause serious injury.
It also argued each case showed Rolfe’s tendency to make a false statement or perform another act seeking to justify the excessive use of force.
The first of four incidents that the prosecution sought to include as evidence was the arrest of Malcolm Ryder on 1 April 2018.
Ryder was charged with hindering Rolfe in executing his duties as a police officer and unlawfully assaulting Rolfe following an incident at Ryder’s house in Alice Springs.
But a judge later dismissed the charges against Ryder and found his version of events – that Rolfe had punched him in the face and then slammed his head into the ground, leaving him unconscious and in a pool of blood during the arrest – was the “more likely” version of how the injuries occurred than the evidence provided by Rolfe.
The prosecution in the Walker case alleged that Rolfe had lied on a statutory declaration about the case, and in an entry on a police database.
It also alleged that later on the day of the arrest Rolfe asked a detective at Alice Springs police station to scratch his face so that he could blame that injury on Ryder in order to justify his use of force.
On 28 February 2019, Rolfe sent a text message that read: “Alice Springs sucks ha ha. The good thing is it’s like the Wild West and fuck all the rules in the job really … but it’s a shit hole. Good to start here coz of the volume of work but will be good to leave.”
The prosecution sought to admit the text message as evidence that Rolfe felt the “rules” did not apply to him when serving as a police officer.
The prosecution also sought to include as evidence that, a little over a month later, Rolfe arrested a 17-year-old boy known as DX. On the night of 1 April, Rolfe was alleged to have been chasing DX when the boy stopped running and placed himself on the ground.
Rolfe was alleged to have “banged” the boys head into a rock on the ground several times soon after.
He had turned off his body-worn camera while giving chase, later saying this was because he did not want the light on the camera to alert the boy to his location while he tracked him.
But the camera of a colleague recorded the boy saying: “You banged me against the rock. Why did you do that to me, brother? Why did you hit me against the rock?”
Rolfe was heard responding: “That’s what happens when you fall over in the dirt. You hit your head on a rock.”
The cut on DX’s head required four sutures. Rolfe said in his statement, which the prosecution alleged was false, that he believed the cut had been caused when DX dived on the ground to hide from police, or otherwise during the police chase.
On 30 July 2019, Rolfe wrote the second message that prosecutors hoped to admit as evidence of his disregard for the “rules” of policing.
In the message, he wrote: “We have this small team in Alice, IRT, immediate response team. We’re not full time, just get called up from Gd’s [general duties policing] for high risk jobs, it’s a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules.”
On 24 September 2019, Rolfe and another officer questioned a man called Wayne Spencer outside the Todd Tavern. Spencer had a similar appearance to a different man who had recently escaped custody, and was “verbally evasive” before running from police.
Rolfe gave chase for about 250m before Spencer allegedly started to slow down. Rolfe was accused of not slowing down but running at “full force” into Spencer, striking him with outstretched hands.
Spencer crashed into a barricade or fence outside a restaurant. He later attended hospital and had his arm placed in a sling because of a sore shoulder.
As in the previous two incidents, the prosecution allege Rolfe made false statements after the arrest to justify his use of force.
On 12 October 2019, Albert Bailey and his partner were having an argument outside a council building in Alice Springs. A police report found Bailey was standing close to his partner with clenched fists and showing “pre-attack indicators”.
Rolfe was alleged to have run at Bailey and pushed him at full speed into the wall of the building without any warning. Bailey fell heavily onto a bench seat, striking his head, and required nine sutures.
Walker was shot three times by Rolfe less than a month later when he deployed with three other members of the IRT to Yuendumu, a remote community about 300km from Alice Springs.
The prosecution had argued that not only did the four incidents show Rolfe’s tendency to use excessive force and make false statements to justify them, but could help the jury evaluate a statement he made immediately after the shooting of Walker.
Walker had stabbed Rolfe prior to the shooting, and Rolfe later gave evidence that he believed Walker had stabbed another officer involved in the attempted arrest, Adam Eberl.
Rolfe told Eberl immediately after shooting Walker that it was “all good” as Walker was “stabbing me, he was stabbing you”.
The prosecution said the four previous incidents involved Rolfe would mean the jury could put into context what appeared to be a “spontaneous and credible utterance” with a history of Rolfe making false statements in the past to justify his use of excessive force
In December 2021, David Edwardson QC, for Rolfe, said in a court hearing regarding the evidence that in all four incidents his client had been cleared by his supervisors of using inappropriate force.
He argued that Det Snr Sgt Andrew Barram, who had reviewed the arrests for the prosecution, was “not an expert at all”.
“I mean to be brutally frank, your honour, I’ll be quite candid about this: the defence position at trial will be that … he’s a barracker and a gun for hire,” Edwardson said. “And he has tailored his statements … for a particular outcome.”
Edwardson also argued that the incidents were irrelevant to the shooting death of Walker, and that the prosecution had “cherry picked” from hundreds of other arrests that Rolfe had completed without incident.
Justice John Burns, who ruled that evidence of the cases was inadmissible at trial, found that to prove they had occurred the prosecution would effectively have to “conduct five separate trials all within one proceeding”. He also found the cases were not relevant to the shooting.
“Nothing in the evidence of the tendency incidents could, by reference to the alleged tendencies, assist the jury in understanding or inferring the accused’s state of mind at the time of the charged events.
“The difference between the circumstances of the tendency incidents and the charged events are such that no inference such as the Crown would ask the jury to draw can be drawn.”
Burns’ decision, and the evidence that had been put before him, had been suppressed so as to not prejudice the outcome of Rolfe’s trial.
It was also confirmed on Friday that an inquest into Walker’s death will start on 5 September. A directions hearing in the case, before acting NT coroner, Judge Elisabeth Armitage, will be held on 29 March.
After the verdict in Rolfe’s murder trial, his supporters, including the NT police association and Edwardson, as well as Walker’s family, the prosecution and Warlpiri elders, all pointed to the upcoming inquest as a chance to investigate unresolved issues in the case.
