Matt Cunningham: Fractured relationship with community members thrust into the spotlight

OUR new Police Commissioner has a job that has never been more important — re-establishing a good relationship between police and community members

Demonstrators gather at Parliament House in Darwin to protest the shooting death of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu. Picture: Katrina Bridgeford

THE tragic case of Kumanjayi Walker and Zachary Rolfe has captured the nation’s attention.

What happened in the moments just after 7pm last Saturday night, when 19-year-old Mr Walker was shot dead in a house in Yuendumu, will be scrutinised like no other moment in the Territory’s recent history.

And it won’t just be the police officer – now charged with murder – who is on trial.

An upcoming murder trial aside, there are many more questions that will need to be answered.

These questions will go to the heart of the chronic dysfunction in the Territory’s remote communities.

They will examine how a community of 1000 people can have no operating health clinic.

And how a Royal Flying Doctors medical retrieval plane never even took off to attempt to save this man’s life due to safety concerns.

They might look at the relative disparity between the affluence of Darwin and the poverty of the bush.

The breakdown in the relationship between police and community members in the bush was acknowledged by Jamie Chalker on the day he was announced as the NT’s new police commissioner. Picture: Glenn Campbell

But perhaps most importantly, they will look at the relationship between police and Aboriginal people – a relationship that appears to be deteriorating.

As one long-time Territorian said to me this week: “This incident is opening the NT up from the insides, and it’s not pretty.”

The breakdown in the relationship between police and community members in the bush was acknowledged by Jamie Chalker on the day he was announced as the NT’s new police commissioner.

“There’s little doubt that the lack of frequency in contact in those communities has left some community members a bit disgruntled in the fact that they haven’t had a permanent police presence,” he said.

For years now there have been complaints that the relationships between senior police and elders in communities – once a bedrock for maintaining order – have disintegrated.

And in the wake of the shooting in Yuendumu, more questions have been raised about those relationships.

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“Why is it that they’ve always got these bloody guns with them?” senior Warlpiri man Robin Granites told The Australian on Friday.

“In my youth we were always playing football and basketball with the police …. we had really good times with the police, but today that doesn’t happen.”

That’s not to underplay how tough a job remote policing is. Nor is it to say this is the case everywhere.

In many communities a good relationship still exists with police.

Much of this comes down to the individual police officer, and the community’s leaders.

The challenge for Chalker will be to re-establish these good relationships across the Territory.

He might just be the best person for that job.

Chalker knows a thing or two about policing in the bush.

He’s spent more than half of his 23 years in the Northern Territory police force working outside of Darwin.

“I know out on the ground, many community members actually want to work with police,” he said at that October 31 press conference.

“Unfortunately over the history they’ve probably seen too many people come and take their family and relatives away.

“There is an importance to remote policing.

“Those who’ve worked remote know, the intrinsic rewards you gain from a community who stand and respect you for what you’ve done.

“It’s not just about locking people up and it never should be.

“So working with community, allowing them to provide some of the solutions, getting some respect back from the TO’s and the elders about their land and what occurs on their land and moreover them being able to influence good behaviours, I think that’s a rich area we can tap into.”

That work has never been more important.