‘Hallmarks of Institutional Racism’ Found in Police Killing of Kumanjayi Walker

Australia|‘Hallmarks of Institutional Racism’ Found in Police Killing of Aboriginal Man

A white police officer who fatally shot an Aboriginal teenager during an arrest attempt in 2019 held racist views that were “normalized” in his department, a public inquiry found Monday in a long-awaited report that cast a harsh light on policing culture in Central Australia.

A coroner read out the findings of the two-year-long inquest into the killing of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker in his outback community of Yuendumu, where he was shot three times by Constable Zachary Rolfe of the Northern Territory Police Department.

The public inquiry found that before the shooting, the police force had ignored repeated complaints about Mr. Rolfe’s violent treatment of Aboriginal people and that he had previously shared videos of forceful arrests with his family and friends, apparently for entertainment.

Mr. Rolfe, 33, was charged with murder, a rare instance for a police officer in the line of duty. He has maintained that he shot Mr. Walker in self-defense, and was acquitted after a jury trial in 2022. The case touched off protests and became a rallying cry over police mistreatment of Indigenous Australians, a minority that is arrested and incarcerated at much higher rates than the rest of the population.

The public uproar over and interest in the case had centered around what, if any, role racism had played in the fateful encounter between the two men. Mr. Rolfe fired the shots after he was stabbed by Mr. Walker in the shoulder with a pair of scissors during a scuffle. The teenager was dragged, bleeding, into a police vehicle as relatives watched.

In her findings on Monday, Elisabeth Armitage, the coroner for the Northern Territory, said: “I am satisfied that Mr. Rolfe was racist and that he worked in and was the beneficiary of an organization with hallmarks of institutional racism.” She traveled to the community — a three-hour drive from the nearest airport — to deliver her findings before residents in a dusty courtyard lined with gum trees, just a few streets away from the red-walled house belonging to Mr. Walker’s grandmother, where he was killed.