Inquest exposes pressure on remote NT police ahead of officer's suicide

Australia Broadcast Center

23-05-2025

WARNING: This story contains references to suicide and self-harm and will be distressing for some readers.
An inquest into the death of a veteran Northern Territory police officer has laid bare the intense pressure facing remote frontline officers struggling to live up to the lofty standards they set for themselves.
Constable Michael Deutrom took his own life in April 2022, three months after taking personal leave from his posting in the remote community of Kintore in the territory's south-west.
An inquest in the Darwin Local Court this week heard Constable Deutrom had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at the time, after more than two decades in the force.
In his opening address on Monday, counsel assisting the coroner, Chris McGorey, said he anticipated the evidence would show Constable Deutrom's PTSD was a result of "accumulated effects that arose from his continued exposure to trauma and stress over his long career".
During five days of hearings this week, Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage heard Constable Deutrom applied for the two-year posting at Kintore, starting in May 2021, after years spent in general duties in Darwin.
In his application, which was out read in court, Constable Deutrom said he was drawn to the community 530km west of Alice Springs — one of the most remote stations in Australia — by the reduced workload compared to city policing.
But by the end of the year, Constable Deutrom's brother Tony told the court he sensed he was frustrated by a lack of resourcing, which affected his ability to do his job, and the increased pressures of the COVID-19 response.
Mr McGorey said Constable Deutrom also told a psychologist he was finding the environment at Kintore "very stressful" amid repeated burglaries and threats of self-harm and "he was on call virtually 24 hours a day".
Constable Deutrom told the psychologist he believed in the mantra repeated throughout his career, taken from the Police Ode and adopted by NT Police — "service above self" — but was finding it increasingly difficult to live by.
By early 2022, Mr McGorey said Constable Deutrom was in a very vulnerable state" and may have reached a "tipping point" where things became so acute he was not able to continue managing in the role.
After leaving Kintore, Constable Deutrom travelled to Adelaide where he stayed with his parents until his death on April 16.
A general practitioner had reported hearing him repeat the police mantra eight days earlier and investigators found diary entries addressed to the 44-year-old's family: "I just can't keep fighting inside myself. I'm sorry to you all."
Tanya Rutherford, who lived and worked alongside Constable Deutrom in Kintore, told the court the posting was "the best time of my career" but "also the worst".
"When the community was calm, there weren't many jobs we had to attend," she said.
"When the community was a bit on edge or disruptive, there would be jobs that would go on for weeks."
Senior Constable Rutherford said she had once been rostered "one-up" as the only police officer in the community for 35 days straight due to staff shortages.
"Our boss said, 'I'm sorry, Kintore, you're going to be one-up this week'," she said.
"Later on in the conversation they said 'It's going to be the entire roster [because] we haven't got any staff'. That was very hard.
"I actually broke down a few times. I spoke to the boss and he was really upset, too."
Senior Constable Rutherford told the inquest she and Constable Deutrom would receive calls from community members on their mobile phones while off duty, which could be "tiring", "frustrating" and "triggering".
"You had to put your phone away so you couldn't see it in your house," she said.
Senior Constable Rutherford said in his final days at Kintore, Constable Deutrom had dealt with a disturbance involving more than 100 people, on top of the increased workload brought on by the pandemic.
"I knew we all weren't travelling 100 per cent but we thought we would just deal with it," she said.
"I didn't think Micheal was feeling so unwell, it was just a subtle decline I noticed perhaps with his running regime, I didn't pick up on anything drastic."
In light of Senior Constable Rutherford's evidence, Judge Armitage noted NT Police did not take a statement from her during its internal investigation into Constable Deutrom's death.
The inquest heard unlike in Western Australia, NT police officers were not psychologically assessed before being deployed to remote stations.
In providing the force's institutional response, Assistant Commissioner Peter Kennon told Judge Armitage assessment had "merit" and was "certainly something we will explore".
"I think there's a lot of value in that being part of the process of officers going remote," he said.
But in her evidence, NT Police Assistant Director of Wellbeing Services Stephanie Stotler said while it had been "proposed recently" to introduce pre-deployment psychometric testing, "we don't have the resources".
"I imagine we would need an additional clinician allocated for psychometric assessments," she said.
The inquest will resume in August for at least two further days of evidence before Judge Armitage prepares her findings.