Vikki Campion: Officer Zach Rolfe is not the bad guy for killing Kumanjayi Walker

Kumanjayi Walker was a violent offender who was shot dead after stabbing police officer Zach Rolfe and threatening his partner’s life. How has this monster been turned into a martyr, asks Vikki Campion.

It is beyond belief that, in 2023, Australians are asking to spear a police officer for doing his job, and disgusting that a coroner could be perceived to entertain that thought by not refuting it whilst standing beside them.

The same coroner on Monday will examine the circumstances surrounding Kumanjayi Charles Arnold Walker’s death, a violent offender, who amongst a litany of crimes was shot after stabbing police officer Zach Rolfe and threatening his partner’s life.

How would spearing another member of the Rolfe family do anything for the Northern Territory town of Yuendumu but take it to new level of a Dante’s hell?

Rolfe’s family have pondered this since the coroner stood beside elders and allowed them to call for traditional payback, the spearing of both his legs.

“We want to see justice — we have not seen the blood of Zach Rolfe,” they said.

While Yuendumu demands blood for the death of Kumanjayi Walker, what’s been absent is demands for justice for those, including children, who suffered at his hands.

His violent history has been mischievously set aside in the hype. From a monster to a martyr.

Kumanjayi Walker was shot and killed in 2019 after stabbing a police officer.

What should be heard during the coronial inquiry is evidence from the one person who could shed light on Walker’s mindset on the night he died — an underaged girl and frequent victim of his rage, beaten with rocks, fists and feet, who was with him the day he escaped from a drug and alcohol centre until the fateful hour when, after stabbing a cop, he was shot.

What should be shown is the 70 minutes of footage of a wounded and shocked Rolfe desperately trying to save Walker’s life with army medical training.

What should be disclosed is that when the ambulance came to the scene to try to save Walker’s life, a paramedic was knocked out in a hail of projectiles. She hid under a desk in the police station that night, surrounded by police, and still thought she was going to die.

The coroner has never admonished or reprimanded the community in their actions attacking first responders.

Nurse Lorraine Walcott was injured when the ambulance sent to attend to Kumanjayi Walker was pelted with rocks. Picture: Courts NT

One would assume a fulsome disclosure of all the facts, not the selection of a few to sensationalise and misinform the public are relevant.

It should disclose nurses were extracted from Yuendumu for their own safety.

What should be examined is how the Yuendumu community failed Walker from birth and failed those he brutalised in his violent history.

What the coroner should investigate is why former chief minister Michael Gunner and police minister Nicole Manison, both former Labor staffers, flew into the emotionally charged community two days after Walker’s death and warned: “Consequences will flow.”

How incendiary.

As a former adviser to an experienced police minister myself, it is beyond belief they would inflame sensitivities during any ongoing investigation.

They weren’t there at the time and were either selective or ignorant of the facts. They only understood the politics they were playing — to frame it as a George Floyd incident.

Instead of a full investigation, the political Zeitgeist of urban Australia demanded pillorying Rolfe, resulting in buried evidence, manipulated facts and leaking his name to the public while he remained stabbed and shocked.

Not 72 hours earlier, Walker had charged at officers with an axe.

Instead, what you will hear is selected text messages from a compendium of more than 5000, seized and extracted without a warrant.

Constable Zachary Rolfe shot Walker after being stabbed by him. Picture: Glenn Campbell

People in the trenches, under fire, talk in brutal ways. It is a means of steeling themselves through circumstances most of us cannot handle.

When someone has to remove a molested child from their family, their language becomes battle-scarred. It doesn’t mean they are criminals.

Rolfe knows it is wrong and has apologised for it.

Over the past few weeks, evidence given to the federal Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has told the same story, from remote community to remote community: We call the police, but they don’t come.

Can you blame them? To save this person, I might be the one who gets a life sentence. Is it worth it?

Consider the attrition rate of the Northern Territory Police since Commissioner Jamie Chalker came to power, whose lack of procedural fairness and justice for Rolfe has led to a mass exodus.

When the Rolfe family has been subject to death threats, ask yourself, would you send your son or daughter to Yuendumu to be a police officer or a nurse, where health workers now live under 24/7 security?

You have seconds to choose if you live or die as a police officer — not enough time to consider an offender’s race, background or culture.

Rolfe finally spoke out this week, knowing doing so could lead to prison time and another disciplinary notice — and only because Commissioner Chalker sacked a senior officer who defended him.

He is screaming for a reality check on our Hollywood appraisal of a situation we would not be able to live in, let alone manage.

What was his alternative? To let chaos reign supreme or let him and his partner be killed?

In his own words: “You don’t see me on duty finding children at 3am, in breach of their bail in the city; you don’t see me talking to them and asking why they’re there only to find out they haven’t had a proper meal in days. You don’t see me instead of arresting them, taking them home past a 24-hour service station and buying them a meal, letting them choose some lollies as long as they choose something healthy.

“You don’t see me take that kid to a home full of drunks, find one sober grandma in a back room to leave the child with and watch as the first thing that child does is offer to share her food with her grandma after being hungry for days, you don’t see how that breaks my heart, good kids being failed by their families.

“You don’t see me hug the suicidal 12-year-old boy for an hour in the hospital to restrain him as he tries to harm himself; once he finally falls asleep, you don’t see me go into the town camps by myself in the middle of the night looking for a sober family member, only to find his parents drunk and refusing to assist their son, you don’t see me going door to door until I finally find a grandma who’s sober enough to come to the hospital, you don’t see the tears in the boy’s eyes as he sees a family member who actually cares enough to come.”

Rolfe’s letter is to us.

It could have been written by so many other frontline workers in remote communities and poses a fundamental question, are you going to back them in, or do the job yourself?

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