Andrew Bolt: Stink to process against cop accused of murdering Kumanjayi Walker

Policeman Zachary Rolfe is set to stand trial over the death of Indigenous teen Kumanjayi Walker — but there’s a stink to the process against him.

Constable Zachary Rolfe is accused of murdering 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker.

From the start, it seemed Constable Zachary Rolfe was the victim of politics. Was he charged with murder because he was white?

Last Friday came more disturbing developments – two fresh charges – as Rolfe prepares to stand trial for allegedly murdering an Aboriginal criminal who’d just stabbed him and his partner.

Whether Rolfe is guilty will be up to the Darwin Supreme Court to decide next month, but how the case has been handled by police and politicians smells of the politics of Black Lives Matter.

On a Saturday in November, 2019, Constable Rolfe went to the volatile Aboriginal community of Yuendumu to arrest 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker.

Walker had been in jail, charged with assaulting police and aggravated assault, and breached his suspended sentence by returning to Yuendumu, 300km northwest of Alice Springs.

On the Wednesday before the shooting, local police had tried to arrest Walker. He chased them away with an axe.

Rolfe, a former soldier and decorated for bravery, was called in from Alice Springs – along with another officer – to arrest Walker instead.

Kumanjayi Walker was shot dead.

Zachary Rolfe is st to stand trial.

It went tragically wrong. According to evidence in the committal hearing, Walker stabbed Rolfe in the shoulder with scissors, and then stabbed Rolfe’s partner, although failed to penetrate his bulletproof vest.

Walker and Rolfe’s partner fell to the ground, still grappling. Rolfe then shot Walker three times in 2.6 seconds, as recorded on bodycam.

That was on Saturday. On Monday, new police Chief Commissioner Jamie Chalker started work.

On Tuesday, with crowds at Yuendumu seemingly primed for another riot, and protests being organised around the country, NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner announced an independent investigation.

Ominously, he promised protesters “consequences will flow”. But which consequences did he have in mind? Against whom?

On Wednesday morning – a lightning four days after the shooting – Rolfe was charged with murder. Was this the “consequences” Gunner had promised?

Two days later, anti-corruption commissioner Ken Fleming, appointed by Gunner to oversee the police investigation, told protesters in Alice Springs “one of the most important messages today is Black Lives Matter” and anyone who disagreed was “corrupt”.

A protest in Melbourne demanding justice for Kumanjayi Walker. Picture: David Crosling

These comments, too, suggested that placating protesters was the authorities’ priority, not justice. Under fire for perceived bias, Fleming stepped down.

But three months after the shooting, police boss Chalker joined in the public commentary.

He publicly denied claims of political interference, and, when asked if the murder charge was backed by enough evidence, declared: “My focus was always on making sure that this investigation of that whole incident will withstand all the rigor of every oversight that we will have.”

Really? In fact, last Friday, more than a year later and just before the trial, it seems police and prosecutors are not confident at all that this murder charge “will withstand all the rigor of every oversight”.

The Director of Public Prosecutions has now charged Rolfe with two more offences – manslaughter, and causing death with a violent act.

Importantly, both new charges are actually alternatives to the murder charge. Rolfe cannot be found guilty, say, of both intentionally killing Walker (murder), and unintentionally killing him (manslaughter).

This suggests to me the DPP thinks Rolfe could well be acquitted of murder, and is giving the court the option of finding him guilty of some lesser charge.

Zach Rolfe was previously given braver awards for rescuing two tourists from a flood-swollen river in the Northern Territory. Picture: Grenville Turner

The NT Police Association, which strongly backs Rolfe, agrees, saying this move “smacks of nothing but desperation”.

So what’s changed?

No doubt the DPP believes he has solid legal reasons and precedent on his side.

All I can safely say is that the last month has looked bad for the police, and could get worse.

At Rolfe’s committal hearing last October, two of the prosecution’s expert witnesses, one an American criminologist, said only Rolfe’s first shot at Walker could be justified as self defence.

But last month, Rolfe’s lawyers went to court accusing police of hiding draft coronial reports into the shooting, compiled by Superintendent Scott Pollock, who’d called the expert witnesses’ evidence “misconceived, ill-informed and wrong”.

Rolfe’s lawyers claimed police Assistant Commissioner Nick Anticich then “stopped the progression of that report because it was inconsistent with the case that they wanted to present”.

Worse, police and prosecutors also failed to tell Rolfe’s defence of those reports or Pollock’s expert view that Rolfe was innocent.

The NT Supreme Court has now ordered police to hand over the reports, heavily redacted, to Rolfe’s lawyers. Pollock is on extended leave.

Zachary Rolfe may be guilty – or not – but there’s a stink to this process against him.