Offensive texts by Zach Rolfe have been revealed during the Kumanjayi Walker inquest

Offensive messages penned by Constable Zach Rolfe have emerged during the Kumanjayi Walker inquest. Read the texts here.

More texts messages written by Constable Zach Rolfe have emerged in which he appears to try to “avoid proper scrutiny” after having “mashed some dude’s face against a wall”.

The texts were read out in the Alice Springs Local Court on Monday during an ongoing inquest into the shooting death of Yuendumu teenager Kumanjayi Walker during a bungled arrest in 2019.

Constable Rolfe was acquitted on all charges over the shooting by a Supreme Court jury in March.

On Monday, barrister for several local families, Andrew Boe, said in one message, Constable Rolfe was responding to another officer who was “having to answer more questions about an incident over a year ago”.

“Some turd claimed I knocked him off his pushbike with 301 and then roughed him up,” the other officer wrote.

“Only person to get roughed up was me as I got dragged on my face as he was trying to run away.”

Constable Rolfe responded: “Over year ago?? F*** they’re gay c***s.”

“F*** ‘em just let them waste time and then if they ever have enough evidence just stress leave until they let it go, seems like everyone else does,” he wrote.

In questioning Assistant Commissioner Travis Wurst about the texts, Mr Boe said Constable Rolfe appeared to “give (the other officer) a tactic to avoid being held to account”.

“He says ‘seems what everyone else does’, does that concern you, that he at least has a belief that this is a thing that a lot of people do in the police force when they’re faced with an examination of their conduct?” he asked.

But Mr Wurst said he thought it was more likely “a very isolated” incident and the practice was “not widespread”.

“There aren’t lots and lots of people in the police force who are being investigated for matters,” he said.

“It has occurred and it does occur that people do take some personal leave, but it’s not widespread, in my view, and it may be very much isolated to an individual, as opposed to something that’s more broader in the agency.”

Mr Boe also read from another text exchange between Constable Rolfe and “a person who appears to be a paramedic”.

“I’ve had some busy shifts lately, mashed some dude’s face against a wall and that talkative … paramedic came and quickly got on board that we were treating him extra nice so that he didn’t make a complaint,” Constable Rolfe wrote.

Mr Wurst agreed that it appeared Constable Rolfe was suggesting the other paramedic “had got on board to diminish the seriousness of what he had done so that the person wouldn’t complain”.

Mr Wurst also agreed it was concerning that there appeared to be “some degree of collaboration” to “avoid proper scrutiny of what he had done”.

It comes after texts read out earlier during the inquest revealed Constable Rolfe believed he had “a licence to towel locals” who he referred to as “c**ns” and “Neanderthals”.

Also on Monday, the court heard a “wholly inappropriate” social gathering held in contravention of police general orders in the days following the shooting “had the potential to contaminate” Constable Rolfe’s evidence at his murder trial.

Counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer told the court a police general order in place at the time of the shooting required that witnesses, “particularly any police members”, be prevented from communicating after a death in custody.

But just two days after Mr Walker died and before Constable Rolfe had made a formal statement, Dr Dwyer said he hosted several police officers, including his three fellow Immediate Response Team members, for a barbecue at his home.

Dr Dwyer raised the issue while questioning Assistant Commissioner Travis Wurst on Monday, who became the most senior officer to take the stand at the inquest so far.

“It’s clearly understood that preservation of life and first aid had to be the top priority (in Yuendumu), after Kumanjayi had passed away, do you agree that every effort should have been made to separate the involved police officers?” she asked.

Mr Wurst said “yes” and agreed that the purpose of that was “to make sure they don’t contaminate each other’s account”.

NT Police Assistant Commissioner Travis Wurst outside court. Picture: Jason Walls

“And that can happen, either inadvertently, because it confuses your own memory by talking to another witnesses, or there can be deliberate interference where police officers might get together and talk about how they’re going to present their evidence,” Dr Dwyer said.

“And whether they do that or don’t, the public needs to maintain confidence, don’t they, that police officers will be separated and there won’t be contamination of their evidence.

“And in this case, where you’ve got a situation where there was going to be an investigation to determine whether there was a homicide, an unlawful killing, it was absolutely essential that Constable Rolfe be separated from other IRT members who he was with at the time of the shooting?”

Again Mr Wurst agreed.

Dr Dwyer asked him if it was “wholly inappropriate” for such a gathering to take place in circumstances where only some members of the IRT, not including Constable Rolfe, had provided statements to investigators.

Mr Wurst agreed and said it was also a contravention of general orders, “particularly in relation to Constable Rolfe”, and had “the potential to contaminate the version of events that Constable Rolfe eventually gave in his trial”.

“And to this day we don’t know the extent to which that did contaminate his evidence, do you agree?” Dr Dwyer asked, to which Mr Wurst responded that it was “a fair assumption to make”.

“Do you know whether or not any of the officers who were involved in attending that social gathering have been disciplined or spoken to about the fact that they were there?” she asked.

“No, I’ve only become aware of that this morning, so I’m not aware of any outcomes in relation to that.”

Earlier, Mr Wurst told the court community members in Yuendumu had threatened police with firearms in the past, amid a wider debate about disarming remote officers.

Mr Wurst said he had spent several years as a young police officer in Yuendumu and other remote communities and while “it didn’t happen to me while I was at Yuendumu”, it “has happened at Yuendumu on other occasions”.

“In community it’s only happened to me on the one occasion and that occurred at Papunya where someone brandished a firearm at me while under the influence of petrol,” he said.

Zach Rolfe during his trial in Darwin. Picture: Glenn Campbell

“Myself and my partner then, who’s now retired, and Acting Sergeant Glennys Green were called to a disturbance that was near a particular community leader’s house, and as we were approaching that house, I saw something that looked unusual in the darkness.

“When I shone my light I could see that this young person had a firearm pointed at Glennys and I, I turned the light off and told Glennys to run.

“Glennys ran left and I ran right and ran around behind him and tackled him.”

Mr Wurst said petrol sniffing had been a significant issue at the time and would cause people to “act completely differently if they were under the influence”.

“Some of the behaviours of some of the young men, who were kind and gentle people when not under the influence, they were very different when under the influence of petrol, unfortunately,” he said.

Mr Wurst said while he had never drawn his Glock while policing remotely, his partner during the late 1990s, now Sergeant Chris Hand, once “went to pull his firearm” but “didn’t brandish it”, when Mr Wurst was almost stabbed by an alleged murderer.

“We were arresting him for murder, for an incident that occurred in Alice Springs the day prior and I placed an audio, back in those days it was a tape recorder, on the roof of the car,” he said.

“Unbeknown to me, he had a knife in his hand by the side of the door, and he thrust that at (me) in an attempt to avoid apprehension.

“Obviously I moved and then we verbalised and engaged and used the community to de-escalate the situation and take him into custody.

“I actually walked him to the police station from that location.”

Mr Wurst said he did not handcuff the man and the group was accompanied to the station by other community members.

“They walked with us to the police station and they were present when we put him into the cells.”

The inquest, which has previously heard some Yuendumu locals want police to stop routinely carrying their Glocks, continues.