He had followed these instructions when he had tracked down the suspect about a week earlier. Jim Crow was wanted on an earlier warrant for allegedly stealing sugar; Bennett had found his people's camp but he was not there. When Bennett returned later and Jim Crow fled, the policeman chose not to risk confrontation with a chase.²² This nonviolent and discretionary policing, under instructions from superiors remote from the frontier, contrasts markedly with Daplin's strict pursuit of an arrest, and willingness to use violence with fatal results, under orders from a local magistrate. However, Bennett's failure to arrest infuriated settlers such as Daniel Cameron, leading to the approach to the magistrate and ultimately to the fatal Border Police pursuit.²³

With few men and wide territory to police, troopers were frequently 'one move behind the play' in frontier conflict.²⁴ The Border Police's Western Port detachment, which also covered the Wimmera, comprised barely a dozen men at the end of 1844 to patrol many thousands of square kilometres.²⁵ In searching for Jim Crow, Daplin and his men were almost a day behind a European party in pursuit of the suspect's group. They overtook the settlers at a campsite that they shared with Bennett's Native Police. Daplin's patrol was joined by Daniel Cameron to provide local knowledge and identify Jim Crow should they find him.²⁶ This joint hunt with settlers suggests police partiality and conflict of interest, similar to that of the magistrates, brought about by their relations with settlers.²⁷ It also suggests an alliance for mutual benefit, if not shared aims. For the troopers, civilians augmented their manpower and intelligence on likely Aboriginal numbers, locations and movements. It also put them in effective command of what might otherwise have been a punitive expedition by squatters, and so helped to fulfil their aim of minimising frontier conflict. For the settlers, troopers increased numbers, firepower and the chances of reducing, by arrest or death, Aboriginal opposition to white settlement. Police command also gave their party the legitimacy of a state agency: any collision would have a degree of official sanction.

From an Aboriginal perspective, however, the police were not a welcome body defending their interests. The appearance of troopers working alongside settlers would have affirmed the view that police were not impartial and that troopers and civilians were merely different aspects of the same European invasion and threat. Jim Crow voiced such an opinion of settlers and police as united opponents when they caught up with him on the Wimmera plain, twenty-fives miles north of McPherson's and Taylor's Longernong station, telling the troopers to go or he 'would kill them all and all the white settlers'.²⁸

An incident on the day of the stand-off would have reinforced that belief. As they searched for Jim Crow, Daplin's party had encountered a camp in thick scrub. It was almost certainly Jim Crow's people. The pursuers separated and approached from different directions, in a military-style pincer movement. As they moved in, 'the spears flew in all directions' and Daplin and Sparrow returned fire, killing an Aboriginal man named Charlie.²⁹ The troopers' intentions may have been hostile, precautionary or entirely peaceful, although it was well known on the frontier that to approach an Aboriginal camp in such a fashion would incite violence.

Now it cannot be denied that even, if a peaceable Tribe is surprised that Blacks seize their spears ... Major Mitchell and every other writer have cautioned parties against hastily making a native Encampment ... a body of Mounted Men Galloping into an Encampment, however peaceable they may have been before, is enough of itself to excite them...³⁰

Those camped in the scrub certainly interpreted the troopers' actions as a threat. The fatal outcome no doubt confirmed their interpretation and their view of police hostility and partiality.

The hunt for Jim Crow illustrates some of the impossibilities of equitable frontier policing using available models. The Native Police's nonviolent approach at this time to Aboriginal relations, comparable with the civil policing philosophy of London's constabulary, angered settlers and led indirectly to the hunt by Daplin's troopers. The Border Police's militaristic approach was supported by the settlers but caused Aboriginal fatalities. Like the paramilitary Irish Constabulary on which both forces were modelled, the Border Police enforced a law to the benefit of recognised landed interests. Indeed, the corps was an arm of the Commissioners of Crown Lands, whose name acknowledged land ownership residing in a single sovereignty and implied denial of Indigenous law and land ownership.³¹ Nonviolent and militaristic policing alienated either European or Aboriginal inhabitants along the Wimmera frontier, and neither method prevented violence or protected Indigenous subjects.

Prosecution: Indictments, Courts and Juries
In an attempt to stop frontier violence, Governor George Gipps in Sydney, under instructions from London, had ordered that inquiries be held into all cases of Aboriginal deaths from collisions with Europeans. The Commissioners of Crown Lands and their Border Police had long-standing instructions to take witness depositions for such inquiries and for any prosecution that might follow.³² In the Jim Crow case, with police involved in the death, the task of collecting depositions fell to magistrate JA Cameron, who had issued the arrest warrant. These he forwarded to the head of government in Port Phillip, Superintendent Charles La Trobe, reaching Melbourne about a fortnight after the shooting. The Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, learned of events before La Trobe could inform him. Details were later forwarded to the Crown Prosecutor.³³