The police officer who killed Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker in 2019 was “racist” and had an “attraction” to adrenaline-style policing, a coroner’s inquest has found.
Walker, 19, died shortly after he was shot three times at close range by Constable Zachary Rolfe during a home arrest in Yuendumu, a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory (NT).
Rolfe - no longer a policeman - was charged with Walker’s murder and acquitted in 2022, sparking protests about Indigenous deaths in custody.
In delivering her findings, Judge Elisabeth Armitage said Walker’s death was “avoidable” and there was “clear evidence of entrenched, systemic and structural racism” within NT’s police force.
“Adrenaline-style policing”: new policing methodology just dropped. What are the pros and cons of it versus, say, Peelian community policing?
Pro: It’s radical and cool and you get to shoot your gun! Pew! Pew!
Con: You occasionally have cases of innocent minorities getting shot by racists
I think the police see these both as pros.
Nothing new about it, the US has been using it for decades.