White man's law

[Julian2]

 

White man's law

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The NT policeman who shot dead a young man at Wadeye is back at work. But the boy's family aren't so recovered. By Paul Toohey.

A policeman who was charged with dangerous act causing death after he shot dead a boy at Port Keats, in 2002, and wounded another, has through a legal technicality walked free and will face no further court action.

 

The boy's father, Ambrose Jongmin, has told The Bulletin that justice has failed his son.

 

Last year, charges against Senior Constable Robert Gregory Whittington were quashed by Northern Territory Supreme Court judge Dean Mildren after it was found the Police Administration Act required that a policeman be charged with an offence within two months of it being committed.

 

No one in the NT's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions seemed to realise this and Whittington was not charged until much later.

 

The DPP appealed Mildren's ruling but this week the NT Court of Criminal Appeal said the judge got it right.

 

Whittington is now back on duty, but Ambrose Jongmin said the law had "stuffed up".

 

"It's upset the family, it's upset me really bad," he said. "How am I going to get on with my life?"

 

Whittington was an acting sergeant at Port Keats, or Wadeye, in 2002, and was overseeing police-sanctioned payback fights on the township's oval. Two gangs, Judas Priest and the Evil Warriors, were having a series of punch-ups as police stood by watching.

 

Police thought public punch-ups were a reasonable way to resolve differences between the gangs, who have been feuding for years.

 

A young man named Tobias Worumbu, aligned to the Evil Warriors, had lost his fight and, humiliated, went to a nearby house and grabbed a shotgun. Another young man, Robert Jongmin, aligned to Judas Priest, went to wrestle the gun off Worumbu.

 

During that wrestle, the shotgun discharged into the ground. Moments later, Whittington began firing his pistol. Worumbu was hit in the back of the arm, and Jongmin was shot, fatally, through the back of the neck.

 

The fact that both men were hit from behind suggested they were running or, at the very least, offering no threat to Whittington. That formed part of the basis for Whittington being charged with dangerous act. Two other bullets from Whittington's Glock pistol slammed into the wall of an occupied house near the oval.

 

"I don't think there's been justice done there," said Ambrose Jongmin. "Really, I wanted to see real justice done by the law, but nothing has been done. What they done there they dropped all them charges and let him out free.

 

"My son never pointed a gun at a policeman. He had no gun. He was just there wrestling that boy.

 

"My son didn't have the gun. He did not. He was trying to disarm the boy, that's all he was doing. And yet he was shot and died, defending his friends [from Worumbu].

 

"When that boy ran out with his gun and fired a shot, my son was worried someone else would get hurt. And yet he was shot in the back.

 

"I've been trying hard to see him [Whittington] charged for what he done. Like if I went out and shot somebody, I'll be charged with that, I'll be in prison. But because he was a police officer â?¦ I don't know."

 

Ambrose Jongmin said his son had "no children, he was young, didn't have any problem with police, didn't have trouble going in and out of jail and he was 18 when he shot. Not once he's been in Berrimah [Darwin's prison], not once."

 

"It's all right for the police officer to get on with his life, but I'm going to drag along. I'm not happy. Justice hasn't been done."

 

Jongmin said Port Keats, some 400km south-west of Darwin, was yet to resolve its problems with young men forming into clan-aligned gangs and hurting each other.

 

"It's still the same. It's been going on and on, that problem we have with the boys. We're trying to pull them up, speak to them, and everything comes to normal again, and somewhere down the track someone jumps out of line and it all goes off again."

 

The DPP has decided it will not pursue the case in the High Court. The matter rests as far as the prosecution authorities are concerned. It remains to be seen whether the people of Port Keats will likewise put the matter behind them.

The Bulletin