Territory cops’ racism scandal getting worse

Ex-cop Zachary Rolfe produced a certificate awarded to elite officers for being unhygienic or incompetent, plastered with an Aboriginal flag – despite police insistence of no race connotation.

Former NT police officer Zachary Rolfe claims at least two former police officers are willing to give statements and speak to the ICAC about the mock awards handed out each year at the annual party for officers in the elite territory response group. Picture: Liam Mendes / The Australian

The racism scandal inside Northern Territory police deepened on Friday when Zachary Rolfe produced an award certificate “for lack of hygiene and incompetence” printed on an Aboriginal flag, purportedly given to a Territory Response Group member as part of an annual tradition.

The former police officer’s evidence to the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker – the Warlpiri man Mr Rolfe shot to death during an attempted ­arrest in 2019 – turned its attention this week to racism at the highest levels of the NT Police.

The force has been reeling since Monday when Mr Rolfe claimed from the witness box that the elite TRG had for years given out a “coon of the year” award for the police officer “exhibiting the most coon-like behaviour”.

In response, three senior officers swore affidavits that there was no such “coon” award. They acknowledged there had been a Nugeda award, renamed the Voldemort award in 2022.

The award was characterised as a joke at the expense of TRG members who were openly ­referred to by other police as ­Neanderthals. Accordingly, their Darwin headquarters was called the cave. The Nugeda was awarded for lack of hygiene that caused a biohazard – such as an officer who stored his stool sample in the communal lunch fridge – or lack of excellence. The prize was a club-like tree branch seized from warring clans in the remote West Daly region.

In one affidavit, Sergeant Meacham King said the annual award was established after a TRG member on a remote job “failed to shower for over a week”.

“None of these awards have any connotation to race,” Sergeant King said in his affidavit.

However, when Mr Rolfe was asked on Friday if he had any proof of the awards that would ­assist the coroner, he said his lawyers had three award certificates obtained from former serving police officers. One purported to be a Nugeda award printed on an A4 image of the Aboriginal flag. That certificate was described in court but coroner Elisabeth ­Armitage has not yet decided if any of them will be made public.

Phil Boulten SC, the lawyer representing the Northern Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency, asked to look at the certificates. When he was handed one of them he was silent for a few moments.

Mr Boulten: “This 2013 award has got everything to do with ­Aboriginality, hasn’t it?”

Mr Rolfe: “Definitely.”

Mr Boulten: “The whole award is the Aboriginal flag.”

Mr Rolfe: “Correct.”

Asked this week about his own use of the racist term “coon” in a text, Mr Rolfe made a litany of stinging allegations about the NT Police including that Commissioner Michael Murphy had been thrown out of a Vietnamese restaurant for asking the proprietors if service was slow because they were still angry about the war.

Mr Rolfe claimed racist language rubbed off on him when he was serving in Alice Springs from 2016-19, and alleged it was normalised in the NT Police to the point that a senior police officer referred to an Aboriginal woman a “a fat gin”.

On Friday, Mr Murphy asked for his name to be unsuppressed in relation to the restaurant allegation. The matter was recently investigated by Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Michael Riches and the details were impossible to establish.

He found the story was an old one and the Alice Springs restaurant had since closed. Sometime between 1997 and 2003 Mr Murphy attended a party there and he was intoxicated. “Mr Murphy does have a recollection of being asked to leave the restaurant, although cannot recall the reason,” he wrote in a letter to the coroner.

“Another witness, who had previously asserted … Mr Murphy had been directed to leave the restaurant as a result of the making of a racist comment, has since admitted that he embellished that story and that Mr Murphy had not in fact been asked to leave.”

Mr Rolfe will continue his evidence at a date yet to be decided.