Mississippi’s Freedom Trail — markers of murder, memory and struggle

I first visited Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market near the hamlet of Money in Leflore county Mississippi in 2009 with my friend Mark Bonta, who was a professor at the local Delta State University in nearby Cleveland at the time. Before that visit I’d not heard much of the brutal murder of Emmett Till and [...]

You can’t handle the truth!

If the NT wants to silence coroners from exposing systemic racism, then the Federal Government must step in. Coroner Elisabeth Armitage (l) and NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro A guest post by George Newhouse* The Northern Territory Government is preparing a response to Coroner Elisabeth Armitage’s detailed inquest findings into the 2019 police shooting of [...]

Chief Minister Dismisses Findings of Institutional Racism in Northern Territory Police Force

A guest post by Paul Gregoire. This article was first published by the Sydney Criminal Lawyers website. Released on 7 July 2025, the 683 page coronial report into the killing of Warlpiri Luritja teenager Kumanjayi Walker by then NT police constable Zachary Rolfe, which was produced by NT coroner Elisabeth Armitage, was so damning in its finding [...]

“There’s 500 more people in prison … and that’s a good thing.” NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro, 10 March 2025

On Monday last – in the midst of an unprecedented leadership crisis in the NT police force and with corrections and the justice system descending into chaos – the NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro was a guest of Katie Woolf’s on her morning show on Darwin commercial radio MIX104.9FM. Katie Woolf is regarded by some [...]

‘He dropped his trousers and farted in my face’ – why Lionel Curtis killed Mo McNaught at the Adelaide River Inn

It was a hot Friday night in October 1979 and a construction crew were well into a session at the Adelaide River Inn, 100 kilometres or so south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, then as now a very comfortable pub set in roomy tree-shaded grounds. Most of the building crew were relaxing with a [...]

The NT News. The slow death of a once valued journal of record.

The first image on this post is today’s front page of the NT News. Below that is page 90, the back page of the same edition. Local, National and International reporting, The Neddies and Advertising By my (admittedly quick & nasty) tally of the content between pages one and 90, if you’d paid your full [...]

Andy Albury: “I will kill again—it is what I do … ”

Part Two: The Queen v Albury [2004] NTSC 59  Andy Albury interviewed by NT Police This is Part Two of a series examining recent developments in the indefinite incarceration of convicted murderer Andy Albury. You can read Part One here. In 2004 the Northern Territory Director of Public Prosecutions applied to Chief Justice Brian Martin [...]

The Police can be a force for good—but guns are part of the problem, not a solution

NT police issue Glock 22, .40 calibre This Musical Dispatch from the Front is a guest post by my old—in both senses of that word—friend Frank Baarda,* a long-term resident of Yuendumu. Greetings, This is a tale of how IMHO the police should be and how it is. On our odyssey when we returned from [...]

By |2024-03-04T16:36:37+09:30March 4th, 2024|Crime, Northern development, NT Police, Some places I've been, The Northern Myth, Yuendumu|Comments Off on The Police can be a force for good—but guns are part of the problem, not a solution

“I will kill again – it is what I do for an occupation.”

Part One: The King v Andy Albury [2024] Andy Albury at Darwin Airport, c1984. He’s been called the Northern Territory’s own Hannibal Lecter and is one of a select few that has been sentenced to remain in an NT prison for the term of his natural life. But the NT’s justice system still has to [...]

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