WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, which has been used with the permission of his family.
A Northern Territory policeman who shot dead an Indigenous teenager has refused to answer some questions at an inquest into the death in case it exposes him to disciplinary action.
Constable Zachary Rolfe shot Kumanjayi Walker three times during a bungled arrest in Yuendumu, northwest of Alice Springs, on November 9, 2019.
He was called to give evidence on Wednesday at the Alice Springs inquest but invoked the penalty privilege when counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer questioned him about a racist text message sent to another officer.
In it, Rolfe refers to Aboriginal Australians as “c–ns”.
“I wish to exercise my right and claim the penalty privilege on the basis my answers might tend to expose me to penalty,” he said.
Rolfe also claimed privilege over other allegedly racist messages found on his phone after he killed Walker.
He confirmed he would also invoke privilege over evidence related to his alleged misuse of police body-worn cameras and excessive force on the job.
It was again claimed when Dwyer showed the court a video found on Rolfe’s phone of another officer outside a bar in Alice Springs.
Before he claimed privilege to protect himself, Rolfe told the inquest about his time as a student at grammar school in Canberra and his military service with the Australian Defence Force.
He also answered questions about the cultural training he had received when he joined the NT police in 2016, saying: “We were taught to respect everyone.”
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Rolfe shot Walker in the back and torso during a scuffle in a darkened room as the Warlpiri man resisted being handcuffed.
The 19-year-old’s community expressed outrage yesterday over Rolfe appearing as a witness at the inquest.
“It is so disgusting, so disgusting,” elder Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves told reporters.
“We as a community are thinking, how come he is still in a job? How come he’s still in the NT?” he said.
He also told his former fiancée he wanted to kill people and bragged in a text message about injuring a man during an arrest outside an Alice Springs pub.
The 31-year-old was banned from applying to join the Queensland Police Force for a decade for failing to disclose violent behaviour on his job application.
NT police psychological testing revealed that Rolfe had above-normal aggression levels and was less likely to accept responsibility for mistakes than other people.
The coroner has also been given evidence about medication prescribed to Rolfe that may have impacted on his decision-making.
Psychiatrist Alexander McFarlane’s evidence is that the drug was “likely to have impacted on his capacity for behavioural inhibition to threat”.
The inquest continues.
