Murder-accused NT cop Zachary Rolfe's lawyer has accused the Officer in Charge at the time of the shooting death of "deliberately concealing" evidence from the court.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Sergeant Julie Frost, who was in charge at the Yuendumu police station at the time of Yuendumu teen Kumanjayi Walker's death on November 9, 2019, was cross-examined on Friday morning by Mr Rolfe's lawyer David Edwardson QC.
The court heard Sergeant Frost had typed out a chronology of the night's events before making her first formal police statement about the incident on November 13, 2019.
However, that chronology was not provided to police or the courts until November 2020 when she was specifically asked for it by Mr Rolfe's defence team via an investigating police officer.
Read more:
Defence lawyer David Edwardson QC asked if Sergeant Frost had "deliberately chosen" to "conceal" the chronology after being asked to provide all of the notes she had made about the matter during a committal hearing for the case in September 2020.
"You knew, didn't you, that that chronology was disclosable material?" Mr Edwardson asked.
"You deliberately chose to conceal them [the notes]?"
Sergeant Frost replied, "That is incorrect."
She said as they were not "formal police notes" but an "aide-memoire" for personal use in assisting with making an accurate statement, she did not consider them to be disclosable.
"I didn't consider them to be necessary; they were my notes for the purpose of making my statement," Sergeant Frost said.
Mr Rolfe has pleaded not guilty to Mr Walker's murder as well as two alternative lesser charges after shooting Mr Walker three times in the chest during an attempted arrest.
The shots were fired when Mr Walker attacked Mr Rolfe with a pair of surgical scissors. Mr Walker succumbed to his injuries about an hour after the shooting.
Mr Walker had been an active "arrest target" since breaching a court order by fleeing a residential rehabilitation centre in Alice Springs to go back to Yuendumu for a funeral.
Mr Rolfe was a member of the Immediate Response Team deployed from Alice Springs to Yuendumu to assist with Mr Walker's arrest after he ran at two local officers with an axe when they tried to arrest him three days earlier.
The response team, which arrived in the community about 7pm on the night of the shooting, was also supposed to help with general duties policing in the community, which was dealing with a lot of unrest as well as severe resource shortages.
Mr Edwardson also questioned Sergeant Frost about the operational plan she had laid out for the response team's time in Yuendumu. It involved conducting "high visibility" patrols and gathering intelligence on Mr Walker's whereabouts before reconvening to arrest him at 5.30 the next morning.
However, Mr Rolfe arrived, had found and shot Mr Walker by 7.23pm.
Sergeant Frost told the court that although she instructed the response team to arrest Mr Walker if they came across him, they were not supposed to be "actively looking" for him, and instead wait until early the next morning to conduct the arrest.
However, Mr Edwardson said it was not possible to follow this plan as they "had no actual intelligence" of where Mr Walker would be at that time.
Mr Edwardson also suggested Sergeant Frost ordered the arrest take place the next morning "so she could have the night off".
"No, that was because it's the safest time to make an arrest," she replied.
Asked by prosecutor Philip Strickland SC whether she intended to "not tell the truth" at the committal, Sergeant Frost said: "No, not at all".
The court also heard the beginning of evidence from Alice Springs Superintendent Jody Nobbs. This will continue on Monday.