Domestic violence inquest hears of increased NT police response times and fresh racism allegations
A long-running inquest into the deaths of four women killed by their partners has heard NT police response times to domestic violence incidents have increased over the past year and racism within NT police has also been put under the spotlight, with fresh allegations made against a serving officer.
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00:00 The same faces making the same walk into Darwin Local Court.
00:06 Despite nearly a year passing since the beginning of a joint inquest into the domestic violence
00:11 deaths of four Aboriginal women, little has changed.
00:15 For police, it's getting worse.
00:17 Today, the court heard between 2022 and 2023, the number of hours spent on domestic violence
00:24 by police has increased to 882,000.
00:28 Based on those statistics, the cost of domestic and family violence to NT Police is projected
00:33 to reach $156 million by 2027 and $209 million by 2030.
00:41 That's more than a third of the entire operating budget allocated to police this year.
00:47 The NT's police commissioner attributing the worrying trends to an increasing number of
00:51 priority one calls and overwhelming demand on an under-resourced frontline.
00:56 What we need to do is actually do better about the prevention and the early intervention
01:01 identifying victims of crime.
01:02 The focus of the inquest turned quickly to racism within the NT Police Force when the
01:08 commissioner was asked a question about a specific incident involving an officer in
01:12 Alice Springs in 2022.
01:15 The sergeant who has no connection to the deaths being investigated by the inquest was
01:20 reported after circulating images of an Aboriginal woman topless in a social media chat with
01:26 fellow officers.
01:27 Mr Murphy revealed at the time the officer was demoted and transferred to Catherine,
01:33 but following requests from the police union to have the punishment reviewed, the demotion
01:37 was rescinded.
01:39 He is now an active member of the force in Darwin.
01:42 When asked why he reversed the demotion, the commissioner admitted he should have taken
01:46 a tougher stance.
01:47 Learning a lot since that time and I've got to really take a hard position on stamping
01:54 out any racism and making sure it's really clear that it's totally not acceptable.
01:59 More challenges for a force already bearing the brunt of a national shame.
02:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]