Overview
- Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old disabled Warlpiri man, died on May 27 after plain-clothed NT police restrained him in an Alice Springs Coles supermarket following an alleged security-guard altercation.
- Acting Commissioner Martin Dole has rejected calls for an independent probe and affirmed confidence in the Northern Territory Police Force’s internal investigation procedures.
- White’s grandfather and community leaders are demanding the immediate release of CCTV and body-worn camera footage and an investigation conducted by an external body.
- This incident is the tenth Indigenous death in custody in Australia so far this year and the 596th since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custodyroner ElisElisabeth Armitage’s findings into the 2019 shooting of Kumanjayi Walker by Constable Zachary Rolfe have been deferred to July 7 amid ongoing community trauma.