WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following article contains the names of deceased persons.

This month, the Coroner in the inquest into the death of Warlpiri and Luitja teenager Kumanjayi Walker recognised that former police officer Zachary Rolfe “was not a case of one “bad apple”” — rather, Rolfe was part of a Northern Territory Police Force with “significant hallmarks of institutional racism” which “permitted a work environment to exist which not only tolerated Rolfe’s racism but allowed it to go unchecked.”

These findings are deeply significant. They confirm what Aboriginal communities have been saying about the racist state of policing in the Northern Territory for decades. Yet we are already seeing politicians in the Northern Territory try to downplay their gravity. It is critical we do not let the Coroner’s findings be shelved and forgotten: they must signal a turning point on holding police to account for their violence, their racism and deaths in their custody.

Much loved by his family and community, Kumanjayi Walker should still be alive today. He was killed in November 2019 after being shot three times at close range by Rolfe. As identified by Coroner Armitage ؅— following a coronial investigation spanning many years, in findings traversing hundreds of pages — Kumanjayi Walker’s death was “avoidable”.

The Coroner found Rolfe was “racist” and could not rule out that racism affected his interactions with the community of Yuendumu on the night of the shooting, as “those attitudes and the consequences of those attitudes increased the risk of a fatal interaction.”

There were the racist text message exchanges between police officers including two sergeants, the unnecessary use of force against Aboriginal men, the jokes made about use of force, the racist awards that police lied about and the normalised use of racist language in the Alice Springs Police Station. It all paints a deeply troubling picture of policing, for which current processes deliver no real accountability.

Kumanjayi Walker is one of almost 600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have died in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991. This list also includes Warlpiri man Kumanjayi White, who was killed by police in Mparntwe in June this year.

This rising death toll is set against the backdrop of a country experiencing a mass imprisonment crisis, with all-time high numbers of people being locked away behind bars. This is a national disgrace and should warrant urgent action from all levels of government, especially in light of the landmark findings made by the Coroner on how racism operates within policing, at both an individual and systemic level.

Establishing an independent police watchdog to investigate complaints of police wrongdoing should be a starting point, and has been a call of too many families who have had loved ones die in custody — from the family of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day in Victoria, to Kumanjayi Walker’s family right now in the Northern Territory.

The Coroner clearly identified how the Northern Territory Police Force “consistently failed to adequately investigate complaints alleging inappropriate or excessive use of force” by officers against Aboriginal people. When police did undertake investigations, their own accounts were consistently and uncritically preferred over Aboriginal people’s experiences. While the Coroner could not say that this was the result of racial bias, “its product was very likely to have been to create in an officer like Rolfe a sense of impunity when using force against Aboriginal men.”

Yet the current police complaints system in the Northern Territory results in the overwhelming majority of complaints made against the police being investigated by the police.

The recommendations made by the Coroner fall short of meeting long-standing calls to meaningfully hold police to account for misconduct. Structural issues like those identified during the inquest require structural change, not further attempts to tinker with a process that operates in a deeply discriminatory way. This is consistent with comments made by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that the findings “reinforce urgent need for comprehensive reforms to address injustice suffered by First Nations peoples.”

There can be no true justice and accountability while police are permitted to investigate the actions of their colleagues in relation to complaints and deaths in police custody.

As recommended by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody over thirty years ago, complaints should be dealt with independently of the police. Truly independent investigations are also consistent with best practice and international human rights standards.

During the inquest, the former Commissioner of Police accepted that his denial of racism in the police force had effectively “gaslit” members of the Aboriginal community who had experienced racism. If the Northern Territory Police Force are as serious about “eliminat[ing] racism in all its forms across the organisation,” as they claim, they should have no objection to independent and more robust accountability measures that keep them true to their word.

The path forward is clear and this moment must be a reckoning for holding police to account. Governments must end the status quo of the police investigating themselves and dodging accountability for their actions. As long as governments — like the Finocchiaro Government in the Northern Territory — allow the police to act with impunity, racism will remain unchecked within policing and Aboriginal deaths in custody will continue.

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