Here’s a not-so-difficult question: if you were a copper, would you risk going into one of the most notoriously violent places in Australia without a gun? We’re talking about a place where nearly the entire town was recently evacuated, due to roving bands of men armed with axes and spears.
Where the local stores have rostered shopping times for different clans, to keep them apart.
Where police vans are routinely pelted with rocks, and officers attacked.
But, sure, send in the coppers without means to defend themselves.
An experienced remote-region police sergeant has rejected calls for
Northern Territory police to stop carrying guns in Indigenous communities.
Remote Sergeant Lanyon Smith also told an inquiry he had seen an increase in women in the community of Yuendumu using weapons including nulla-nullas, trampoline poles and tyre levers to attack one another.
Sergeant Smith was giving evidence at the inquest into the death of Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker, who was shot dead at Yuendumu by Constable Zachary Rolfe during a botched arrest attempt on November 9, 2019.
Watch how the ABC tries to skew the narrative, next:
Sergeant Smith was one of two officers Walker threatened with an axe when they tried to apprehend him three days before the fatal shooting.
Sergeant Smith and Senior Constable Christopher Hand backed away during that incident and Walker escaped.
He told the inquiry he had never drawn his Glock in more than 20 years as a police officer.
It might have been pertinent for the ABC to mention that, on the day he was shot, Walker stabbed Constable Rolfe with a pair of scissors.
Warlpiri elders called for police to be banned from carrying guns in Indigenous communities after Constable Rolfe was acquitted of Walker’s murder in March.
Maybe they ought to call for their own to stop stabbing and beating one another, and police? Just a thought.
But the ABC isn’t done skewing the narrative.
Sergeant Smith was asked why he hadn’t drawn his Glock when Walker threatened him with an axe during the arrest attempt on November 6, 2019.
He said in his experience a Warlpiri man brandishing a weapon was often a show of strength, rather than a threat.
“It’s more so (a display) for the men carrying the weapons,” he said. “I’ve rarely gone to male-on-male fights.
Notice how they again fail to mention that, on the fateful day, Walker wasn’t “displaying”: he was violently attacking.
“Over the last four years it’s been mainly the female Warlpiri women with the nulla-nullas, trampoline poles, tyre levers – and they have used it on each other.”
And not just each other.
Sergeant Smith told the inquest he was aware of two incidents where officers at Yuendumu had been seriously injured, including one this year where Sergeant Anne Jolley, the officer-in-charge, had been attacked from behind during a riot.
“I don’t know the extent of the injury to her, but I believe she was hit from behind,” he said.
“It was either a weapon or she was punched. I don’t know.”
He said the other incident – involving another female officer – had occurred before Walker was shot dead.
“I believe she was hit with a weapon of some sort,” he said. “I can’t remember who it was, but it was obviously at Yuendumu.”
The Australian
Sounds like just the sort of place you’d want to go unarmed, for sure.
