Ex-top cop takes swipe at ‘corrupt’ former colleagues, calls for racist officers to be shown the door

A former member of NT Police’s top brass has called for Zach Rolfe and other police who express racist attitudes to be sacked, saying ‘they have to go’.

Former NT Police Assistant Commissioner Nick Anticich hit out at what he called the NT Police Association’s ‘rabid pursuit of innocence’. Picture: Jason Walls

A former member of NT Police’s top brass has called for Zach Rolfe and other police who express racist attitudes to be sacked, while labelling superiors who look the other way following complaints of excessive force “corrupt”.

Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage is presiding over an ongoing inquest in the Alice Springs Local Court into the death of Kumanjayi Walker after he was shot three times by Constable Rolfe during an attempted arrest in Yuendumu in 2019.

Constable Rolfe was acquitted on all charges in March following a trial in the Supreme Court, which is now due to hear arguments from his lawyers on Wednesday about the scope of the evidence he gives at the inquest.

In addressing the Coronial inquiry on Tuesday, now retired assistant commissioner Nick Anticich said revelations of racist text exchanges between Constable Rolfe and other officers, including serving sergeants, were “abhorrent”.

“It offends me as a police officer to think officers of my profession are involved in such conduct,” he said.

“Those people have to go – they have to – we cannot have them representing the community in a police force that’s here to protect the community. It is wrong.”

The inquest has also heard allegations senior police turned a blind eye to incidents in which Constable Rolfe used excessive force against Aboriginal people, including a 14-year-old boy.

Counsel for the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, Phillip Boulten SC, questioned Mr Anticich about the allegations that “the immediate supervisors of general duties police did not address complaints of excessive use of force in a rigorous manner”.

Zach Rolfe’s lawyers will argue in the Supreme Court on Wednesday that he cannot be forced to answer questions that would expose him to disciplinary proceedings. Picture: Jason Walls

“The results were, time after time, complaints by NAAJA on behalf of Aboriginal clients were essentially regarded cynically, or the product of over-exuberance, or ‘wokeism’, I suppose would be a new way to put it, and that the police officers who were the subject of these complaints were exonerated,” he said.

Mr Anticich replied that the revelations were “an abject failure, and it’s corrupt”.

“It’s wrong, and this shouldn’t have happened,” he said.

Mr Anticich also took aim at the police union, the NT Police Association, saying it was responsible for frustrating the complaints process, and describing statutory time limits on pursuing officers as “ridiculous”.

“We have to support the people who are in the force, we have to give them more faith, I think, in the system (so) where they see something wrong, they can do something about it,” he said.

He said it was his “fear and belief” the status quo discouraged honest officers from coming forward due to “the thought of the NTPA fighting against you because you’re going to say something about one of your own”.

“It’s much easier to walk past this and let it go and that’s probably ended up in some of the situations, some of things we see now,” he said.

Mr Anticich, who conducted a review of NT Police’s disciplinary procedures before his retirement, blamed the union for rendering complaint resolution “almost impossible”.

“I think that the system had been made inoperable by virtue, I think, of the input through the NTPA, their rabid pursuit of innocence, in absolutely every case, the inability to apply simple disciplinary outcomes to relatively straight forward matters,” he said.

Phillip Boulten SC outside the Alice Springs Local Court. Picture: Jason Walls

As an example of the system’s failures, Mr Anticich said if a hypothetical officer committed an assault and it was witnessed by another officer who failed to report it for six months, it would no longer be actionable.

“It’s said to have fallen out of statute, or the time period,” he said.

Mr Anticich said while there were “a number of complicating interpretations” of the law, there was “another interpretation that might be applied to some of the provisions that would make it workable”.

“But if we have a highly litigious environment where every single matter, however petty, however minor it might be, that is taken to the highest court by the NTPA, it is impossible to litigate every single simple matter,” he said.

“I mean, you know, let’s be reasonable about this, I think you can argue points of law about culpability, you know, responsibility and so forth, but every single case effectively during the period that I was aware was ‘Not guilty, didn’t do it, it wasn’t us’.”

Mr Boulten asked Mr Anticich how reasonable the statutory time limits, including a two month bar on bringing criminal proceedings, were.

“It isn’t, it’s ridiculous,” he said.

The inquest continues on Friday.