Two police shootings, two murder trials and two men dead in the desert sand four decades apart

Decades before the worlds of Zach Rolfe and Kumanjayi Walker tragically collided in Yuendumu in 2019, another police shooting exposed the fragile relationship between officers and Aboriginal Territorians.

ALMOST 40 years before the worlds of Zach Rolfe and Kumanjayi Walker tragically collided in Yuendumu in 2019, another police shooting exposed the fragile relationship between officers and Aboriginal Territorians.

July 20, 1980 began like any other day in the outback town of Ti Tree but would end with 44-year-old Anmatyerre man Jabanardi dead in the desert sand and see Constable Lawrence Clifford ultimately charged with his murder.

Clifford and Constable Malcolm Warren were returning to the local station when they saw a green station wagon filled with Aboriginal men coming the other way and decided to pull it over.

In a manoeuvre that would later be described by deaths in custody Royal Commissioner Elliott Johnston QC as “extraordinarily dangerous” and “totally indefensible”, Clifford drove his police car onto the wrong side of the road and directly at the oncoming station wagon.

Having stopped the car, the two officers proceeded to take several of its occupants into custody, with Clifford striking one of them to the head with a makeshift billy club in the process.

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After being threatened with further assault once the group reached the lockup, the man and two others fled the divvy van and a mallee broke out in which Clifford was also struck with the baton.

It was then that Clifford drew his revolver, placed it under his left arm and fired a shot, wounding one of the Aboriginal men in the chest.

Clifford fired again and then, on his version of events, he saw Jabanardi about 10m away approaching him at a fast walking pace and holding a stick.

He then aimed the revolver and fired a third shot which struck Jabanardi in the stomach, fatally wounding him.

An inquest later heard the confrontation was not a legitimate exercise of police power but a “punitive expedition” in response to an earlier incident in which Constable Warren had been injured in a fracas with a group Aboriginal men.

And while Coroner Gerry Galvin was unable to resolve the question, he was highly critical of the police officers’ actions, including “considerable inaccuracies and complete untruths” recorded in Constable Warren’s journal.

“It is clear that this day journal contains many inaccuracies and nowhere during the investigation or the subsequent hearing has any satisfactory explanation ever been given for these incorrect entries,” he said.

“The method of apprehension appears quite extraordinary and puts both the police officers and the driver and passengers in the other vehicle at considerable personal risk, particularly if, as suspected, the driver was adversely affected by alcohol.

“At no time has any satisfactory explanation ever been given for the course adopted.”

Mr Galvin committed Clifford to stand trial in the Supreme Court where he was ultimately acquitted of Jabanardi’s murder. Rolfe has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the shooting of Kumanjayi Walker and had indicated he intended to plead not guilty when the jury convened on Monday before his trial was postponed last week.

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