Why Good Undercover Cops Think Like Psychopaths

For years Jason lived a double life as an undercover police officer, working inside the criminal underworld. No two jobs were the same, and the danger was always there. The toll of that work didn’t end when he left the force. In this episode, Jason takes Gemma inside his undercover life and how it impacted his real life. He explains why he believes he’d be a better police officer now, because he understands how the job affected him. Purchase Jason’s book Undercurrent: The Hidden Cost of Going Undercover here. https://fave.co/3UCus8C GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 MAMAMIA OFFERS: Subscribe here https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe/?utm_source=shownotes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=truecrime&utm_content=black-friday&code=BLACK30 for 30% off your annual Mamamia subscription for Black Friday with code BLACK30. Code applied at the checkout. Offer ends November 30. Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. CREDITS Host & Executive Producer: Gemma Bath Guests: Jason Somerville Produced by Ella Maitland Video Editor: Lisa Chen Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Gemma Bath?

  Jason Somerville is sitting in a car in Brisbane with his controller, discussing his next undercover job as a cop, working in the Queensland Police Force. The informant is a woman named Susan. She's a heroin addict and a sex worker, who is going to introduce him to some significant drug targets. There's just one problem. He went to school with her seven years ago. If she recognizes him, the entire operation will be blown. But Jason looks very different now. They decide to risk it. They knock on the door of the caravan Susan is staying in. Jason's controller makes the introductions. Susan, this is Michael. Susan reaches out her hand. No hesitation, no double take. They're in.

• 0:47Gemma Bath?

  Now, he'll have to work alongside her for several months as he attempts to network his way inside her drug connections without tipping anyone off to his real identity. But this isn't Jason's first undercover job. It's not even his most complicated. He's stopped being surprised by his encounters in Queensland's criminal underbelly.

• 1:16Gemma Bath?

  I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. During his undercover course, Jason Somerville remembers watching Reservoir Dogs as part of the training. The 1992 plot of the film is about eight men planning to rob a jewellery store. One of them is undercover.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  To do this job, you gotta be a great actor. You gotta be naturalistic. You gotta be naturalistic as hell. Because if you ain't a great actor, you're a bad actor. And bad acting is bullshit in this job.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  What is this?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  That's an amusing anecdote about a drug deal.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Something funny that happened to you while you're doing a fucking job, man.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Damn. I gotta memorize all this? There's over four fucking pages of this shit here.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Look, man, just think about it like it's a joke, all right? You memorize what's important, the rest you make your own, all right?

• 2:11Gemma Bath?

  Tim Roth's character, Mr. Orange, practices a fabricated story over and over until every detail feels real enough to survive scrutiny. Lying is an enormous part of the job, but you have to be able to do it convincingly. And for two years, Jason did just that, turning himself into whatever character his informants needed to allow him to fit into their world. The job looks flashy, especially on TV. But Jason learnt pretty quickly that it's also boring and tedious and not exactly conducive to a work-life balance. In his book Undercurrent: The Hidden Cost of Going Undercover, Jason explores it all. Because while the job was exciting,

• 2:54Gemma Bath?

  the lies and the psychological effects stay with you long after you leave. Jason joins us now.

• 3:06Gemma Bath?

  Jason, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations. Becoming a police officer wasn't exactly your plan A, was it?

• 3:15Speaker 03

  No, no, it was not. I don't even think it was Plan Z at the time that it happened.

• 3:19Gemma Bath?

  You wanted to be an actor. How do you go from acting to police officer?

• 3:24Speaker 03

  It's gonna sound really, really naff, but I was watching TV late one night and there was an ad that came on that said, "Join the police." So I went, "That sounds like a good idea. I'll do that." And the next morning, I threw in an application.

• 3:37Gemma Bath?

  What did the people around you think about that?

• 3:41Speaker 03

  I was not the type of kid that probably you would have expected to join the police. Not that I was a bad kid, but I... Authority was not my strong point.

• 3:54Gemma Bath?

  So you'd had run-ins with the law? I didn't think you could join the police if you had.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. Just I questioned authority a lot.

• 4:01Gemma Bath?

  Gotcha.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Not so much that I did anything wrong. I was scared of the police because, you know, we're talking late 80s back in those days. Late 80s, early 90s, back in those days, the police, you know, you're allowed to get a clip up the side of the ear as a kid and no one thought anything of it.

• 4:17Gemma Bath?

  So when you actually joined, it was 1991. You put the uniform on after, you know, getting through the academy. You're out there in general duties. How did you find it? What did you think about the actual job?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  I thought it was great. I... It's funny. What you think police do and then what you actually do are two completely different things. But I loved it. I loved the structure. I loved the community feel, I guess, of being a police officer. I was in Cairns and, you know, people tended to have a respect for police back then that I'm not sure that they have now.

• 5:02Gemma Bath?

  I'm curious as to what you mean when you say that

• 5:07Gemma Bath?

  it wasn't what you expected or what people would expect.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Well, I think a lot of people think that... And I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about, you know, back in the 90s. There was, you know, Fitzgerald had just been been and gone. So everyone thought police, all they did was eat McDonald's and wrote traffic tickets and took, you know, brown paper bags of money off drug dealers.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  But there was a lot more to it. And when I say it was exciting, a lot of it actually wasn't exciting. It was just interesting. So, you know, the very first shift I had, I spent

• 5:49Speaker 03

  all day standing in the middle of a road in Cairns in summer at a traffic accident.

• 5:56Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  And, you know, it's like this, it was 38 degrees or something or other and it was, you know, 90% humidity and it was horrible. But it was still fun. And I know that sounds really strange, but there was just something about it that clicked in me and went, "I enjoy doing this."

• 6:15Gemma Bath?

  Tell me about your first kind of toe dip into the undercover world because it happened by chance in a taxi.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  It did. So this is a couple of years after I've got sworn in. I'm back in Brisbane. I was engaged and we, myself and my fiancee, were out with her friends and my friends. And we had an argument and she went home. I jumped in the cab and went home and the cabbie said to me, he said, "You look like you've had a bad night." And I said, "Oh, yeah," you know, and sort of told him the story. He said, "Do you want me to give you something to sort of perk you up a bit?" And I went, "What do you mean?" He said, "You know, like some speed or some ecstasy." And I'm thinking to myself, "I just look like a copper." Because I did. I, you know, I probably still look like a copper now.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  But I had short hair, you know, I was clean cut. I was wearing a polo shirt and jeans, typical copper dress. You know, I even had my badge in my back pocket that, you know, you could see the outline of when you stood up. You know, it was typical police officer. And anyway, he said that to me and I went, "How about I take your number? And I might have a party coming up and I'll give you a call." And I got home and rang the local detectives. And a few days later, got a call back from the crime ops and said, "Oh, we're interested no more." That's how it all came about.

• 7:43Gemma Bath?

  Well, they asked you to do a buy-bust.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 7:47Gemma Bath?

  What exactly does that mean?

• 7:49Speaker 03

  So a buy-bust is where, as it's, you know, just as the words sound, I would go and pretend to buy drugs off the target. And then, once the drugs had been given to me, the detectives would turn up and bust him.

• 8:06Gemma Bath?

  Do you remember getting ready for that first bust? Because, you know, you're not putting the uniform on. You kind of have to dress the part. Take us back. Do you remember how you felt?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  I was nervous. So, you know, I tried to, tried to scruff myself up. I tried to sort of go back to my uni days and think, "Okay, how would a uni guy dress if he was going to be going and buying drugs?" So, you know, I put some dirty clothes on and ripped jeans and that sort of stuff.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  But it was, it was kind of surreal because I was going, well, I, I don't know what I'm doing here. And then we went into the, I went into the, the headquarters and I made the call. And the guy said, yep, not a problem. Give us some time, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, meet us here, which was at a park. And so they drove me there and dropped me at the, at the, um, at the train station. So it looked like I walked up out of the train station. But I had a, a recording device. Now, the recording device is the size of a matchbox. And the only place it would go was in my jocks.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  And what they didn't tell me was that it became scalding hot. So not only was I walking unnaturally, because that's what you do where you're wearing jeans and you've got something, you know, that shouldn't be where it should be, where it was. But it was getting hot at the same time. So, and all I can remember thinking of is this guy is going to know something's wrong just by the way that I'm walking and, oh my God, that's hot.

• 9:46Gemma Bath?

  Well, I can imagine you never put the recording device there again.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  No, uh, no, I didn't. And it's probably good because in later operations, in one in particular, every time I went and met a particular target, the first thing she would do was grab me there to see if there was a, a recording device.

• 10:08Gemma Bath?

  So how did that first bust go? Was it successful?

• 10:11Speaker 03

  It was very successful. He sold me the ecstasy. He got grabbed. He told me not to say anything.

• 10:21Gemma Bath?

  You got fake arrested?

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Yep, got fake arrested, got put in the car. And he ended up becoming an informant.

• 10:30Gemma Bath?

  Oh, really? So he flipped?

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is what most people do because, you know, they, they, they don't want to go to jail. It's, it's surprising. The, the, the human psyche of, oh, I'm not going to dob my mates in until

• 10:47Speaker 03

  it's my backside that's in the sling.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Is, I'm sure there are people that don't say anything, but I reckon the number of people that do that, that don't say anything are probably in the single digit percentage.

• 11:04Gemma Bath?

  Really?

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:06Gemma Bath?

  Did that buy bust give you a taste for it? I can imagine there's like a level of adrenaline doing something like that.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Oh, it was, I was, I don't think I slept that night. It was, it was great. I was on an absolute high. And it, it got me into the, uh, the course. So there's a course coming up for, for covert police, a course that, that the police do to train you to become an undercover police officer.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  And I got asked to apply for it and I did, and the rest of the essay is history.

• 11:39Gemma Bath?

  How do they pick who is going to be a part of that? Was, was that buy bust essentially your addition?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Oh, it, it, it played a part in it. Yeah. It showed that I was able to, to keep it all together. There's a lot more that goes into it over the, over the period. So we had to do, one of the, one of the things we had, we had two days of psychometric testing that we had to do. And it's, it's really interesting. So the testing that we did was the same sort of testing that the FBI and police departments in America used for their covert police or undercover police. So the test that they used, one of the things that they found is that the personality that makes a good police off, and good undercover police officer is the same as a psychopath. That they're, they're, they're both very good at becoming other people.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  But the police person has a very high rating when it comes to justice and to emotional IQ, which means that they can be empathetic rather than just exploiting that without feeling it.

• 12:41Gemma Bath?

  That's so interesting. Do you think you fell into that kind of bucket?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Oh, I believe so, yes. You know, the one thing I said that I, I took away from, uh, working undercover was that I'm very good at lying.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  And, and when you think about it, that is a very psychopathic thing to say.

• 13:03Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, to be good at lying as well. And to not feel bad about it in the moment. I, I don't think I'd be able to keep it up for as long as you had to.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  I, I justified it by the fact that it was a game. So we were both playing a game and it was whether I was winning or they were going to win. Now, me winning meant they got arrested. Them winning, I don't even want to think about what the outcome was.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Depending on who I was dealing with. But if I looked at it as a game, then I could understand and rationalize with my, you know, empathetic person that they knew the risks going in and that's, that's their problem.

• 13:46Gemma Bath?

  What kinds of things do you learn about in an undercover course?

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Lots of things, um, small things, counting money.

• 13:57Gemma Bath?

  Cause I guess if you're not a criminal, you haven't had to do it.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Well, unless you're a shopkeeper. And nowadays, you, you know, you would, you wouldn't count money because who has money?

• 14:08Speaker 03

  But, you know, not putting money down, being able to hold money and count it folded and that sort of thing. And what I found really funny was that the course was done at the police academy. So you had, I think there was 12 of us or 10 of us doing this course, learning how to be not police at where all the police are trained.

• 14:29Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  And it was very interesting. But just things like, you know, how to spot a real diamond.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  We were put under pressure in, in certain situations to see how we would react. We were, uh, one of my tells or twitches that I have is I say mate a lot. And every time I do it, it'd be like, I'm not your mate. And you're like, what? And so I'm not your mate. And it's like, I, I, oh, I said mate again, didn't I? And so trying to get that out. Now, I never, was never able to get it out because years later, when I was working in recruitment, I had a manager that every time I said mate on the phone, would throw a ball at one of those squeegee balls and I'd used to get hit about five times a day. So it obviously didn't work, but those sorts of things, lots of other things.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Learning about drugs, again, I, the, the closest thing I'd come to drugs was, was marijuana at high school, hard drugs, knew nothing about them. I knew what they were, but I, you know, I, I wouldn't know, you know, what, how, how much a gram of, of anything was or, or anything like that, or how it related to an ounce or all those sorts of things or what it looked like. So all those sorts of things. And then there was the testing about, you know, we all went out drinking one night and we had strange people come and start talking to us, asking us what we were out there doing and that sort of stuff to see if we would big note ourselves and, and that sort of stuff.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Luckily I didn't.

• 16:05Gemma Bath?

  So they were undercover trying to get you to basically come out from being undercover?

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, just to sort of say, so we were, we were given a, I think we're going out drinking. Do not tell anyone who you are or what you're doing. Or that, you know, you, you're on a course or anything like that, or that you're a police officer and that sort of stuff. And, you know, we had, there was guys and girls and we had different people come up during the night and talk to us that not out of place because we were in, you know, we, we went to dinner, then we went drinking and that sort of stuff. And it was to try and get us to, you know, I had this, this beautiful young lady come up to me and start talking to me and asking me, you know, what I was doing and that sort of stuff. And as much as you wanted to go, oh, you, you, in the back of your mind, you're going, was this a test?

• 16:53Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. It sounds very TV, Jason.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Parts of it are, but then there are the parts where you sit around and wait. I spent a lot of time sitting around waiting. And, and then I spent a lot of time sitting around transcribing tapes and doing notes. So the TV part of it would be 20% maybe?

• 17:20Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, right.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Then, then, then everything else is boring.

• 17:25Gemma Bath?

  After the break, Jason tells us more about his undercover life and the role of his controller.

• 17:35Gemma Bath?

  I found the terminology really interesting. Can you tell us about the setup? Because you kept referring to your controller.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:45Gemma Bath?

  What does that mean?

• 17:46Speaker 03

  So back in the bad old days, prior to the early, so the late eighties and going back into, you know, thirty, forty years previously, they just picked someone and said, off you go. Go and do undercover, come back to us when you've got something realistically. And then it was like, you know, call us every week and let us know you're still alive type deal. That changed and they gave you a controller. So someone from the, the crime operations squad that you were doing the, the job. So I was doing drugs, so I got a, a drug detective as my controller.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  If I'd been doing a property job, I would have had a property detective as a detective from the property crime operations. And basically they were the person that, so chain of custody, you know, had to hand the drugs over to them. They would then lodge them at, at police headquarters.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  They would make sure that I was safe. They would make sure that if I was having any issues, I was, I would talk to, to them and, and, and catch up, you know? And I got relatively close with a couple of my controllers. I gave one of my controllers a heart attack. Well, actually I didn't, but he had a heart attack. It, it's just one of those things that, that you sort of got relatively close and you're able to confide in them about stuff and, and, you know, um, you know, I still have memories of one of my controllers going to his place and they had, uh, young kids and, and sitting there on a, on a Saturday morning, talking about the, the drug, the, the drugs that I bought the night before, watching the wiggles with him. Do you know what I mean? It's, it's that kind of surrealness to it.

• 19:27Gemma Bath?

  What do you mean you gave one of your controllers a heart attack?

• 19:30Speaker 03

  I didn't. He actually had a heart attack, which was unfortunate. I couldn't get hold of him and it wasn't until someone rang me and said, oh, look, he's had a heart attack. He was on the floor, uh, when I say on the floor, so he was at work and he had an actual heart attack.

• 19:43Gemma Bath?

  Wow.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  And I couldn't get hold of him. Policing does that to you apparently.

• 19:48Gemma Bath?

  Well, I can imagine that job, being a controller would be very stressful as well because your life is in their hands.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, not so much in their hands, more they have to be able to control you or rein you in because otherwise, you know, um, for example, and, and in the book, you'll, you'll, you'll have seen this, that one of the operations I did, I had a direct relationship with two targets and the informant.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Now, I may or may not have not said anything about it when it all first came up, purely so I could do the job to see what their reactions were. A controller's job is to make sure that I've got enough, that, that, that they've got my, enough of my trust to tell them that, if that makes sense. So they don't, they, so it, yes, they're responsible for me and yes, my life depends on things that they do, but my life also depends on the fact that they go, clip up the side of the head, what are you doing?

• 20:54Gemma Bath?

  How do you work out the persona for a job? Like, is it between you and the controller that you come up with a backstory, a kind of a uniform, a look? Like, how does all that work?

• 21:06Speaker 03

  The backstory, yes, because they've already spoken to the informant. So the, the, the discussion is going to be, okay, well, what's going to suit you? You know, where will you have met? Those sorts of things. I'll get some input into that as well because I'm the one that has to remember it. And, um, when it comes to look, it, and the type of person, I treated it like a, an acting gig to a sense. It was like a character. Okay, well, what's this character? Who, who do they do? And I played a couple of different people and basically what I found was I became the person that the informant needed me to be in that situation or the target needed me to be in that situation.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  So I could have been the gay boyfriend or I could have been the standover man or I could have been the jittery drug pusher. It, it, it just depended on what the target needed me to be.

• 22:08Gemma Bath?

  Look at that acting desire coming full circle.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Yes, I know.

• 22:14Gemma Bath?

  Did you get a, a fake house and did you have to live there throughout the whole operation or how did that work with your normal personal life?

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we had, um, uh, safe houses and for, I, I had the, the first, one of the first safe houses I had was at Highgate Hill. And it got broken into and, um, they stole a police computer, my computer that I do my notes on. And, and here's, here's the interesting thing that you're working undercover and the police give you a laptop and the moment you boot up the laptop, the first thing that comes up, a big police emblem.

• 22:55Gemma Bath?

  That feels like a floor.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you think? Anyway, so the, the place was easy to break into. What, what they'd done is they'd actually, the, the apartment block was being, um, painted. So there was a painter's gantry and they've just gone up every floor and, and jimmyed the, the door, lifted doors and, and gone around. And I woke up that night and I'd gone, what's going on here? I, I just woke up feeling uneasy. And what I'd actually done, um, is I had a bag on the table and I'd taken my gun out of the bag the night before and, um, hidden it.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  And, and I didn't usually do that, but for some reason that night I did. And I woke up to noise outside and I thought, oh, it's just the wind. And then in the morning I've gone to go and do something and I've gone, didn't leave the door open. My computer's not there. And then I've gone, oh, I've been broken into. Now, if I'd left my gun in my bag.

• 24:02Gemma Bath?

  Could have been a lot worse, yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  If I'd had my gun closer to me, that could have been a lot worse too.

• 24:08Gemma Bath?

  But Jason, how does this work? Cause you've mentioned you had a fiance. You got married to this woman during all of this. And how do you, how do you maintain a relationship when you're living in a random house, playing some different person for large portions of time?

• 24:26Speaker 03

  I would see, so we weren't living together prior to getting married because that, that was back in the, you know, in the nineties, not a lot of people did that sort of thing. I, I, I would go home between jobs. So, you know, if I had four or five weeks off, I'd just be at home and that was enough for her to say, okay, when's your next job and when are you going?

• 24:48Speaker 03

  And, uh, I would come back every now and then to, to, to the house. And you, sometimes you forget that you're, you know, playing Michael Bates and that you're coming home and you're coming to your real home. And, you know, there was one particular time when I got followed home. And if it wasn't for the fact that my next door neighbour used to be a bikie, um, and scared the living daylights out of the, the guys that were sitting outside me, that my, my cover could have been blown. Walks up to the window of the car and puts a double barrel shotgun on it and goes, hi guys, can I help you? And they've gone, yeah, nah, bye and taken off in Vietnamese. And, um, so, so that sort of helped.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  But there, you, you sometimes, living and working in Brisbane, you forgot that you were this other person sometimes and, and those sort of things could have happened.

• 25:44Gemma Bath?

  Cause how long on average were your operations?

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Uh, four, five months.

• 25:52Gemma Bath?

  Wow. So you'd be living in a safe house or safe houses for this four, five months? And would you get like weekends off or a day or here to go and see?

• 26:01Speaker 03

  I, um, I, there was one operation I did in King Arroy and, uh, I would take off for a couple of days, um, because my controller, she was married as well. So, you know, she would have to go home and, and spend time. So we'd just take off and go back and spend a couple of days in Brisbane and then go back to work, so to speak, living in, in, in King Arroy.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  And I'd do the same thing. You know, I'd go home and spend, you know, a night at home every now and then, if I didn't have anything on.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  And there were times that I got rung at home where I had to sort of, you know, be Michael and, and pretend that, that I was, you know, here or there or doing something and organised to buy drugs or to organise to buy property or whatever it was.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  So it wasn't like I never saw home and I, and I did, you know, obviously there were family birthdays, there was Christmas, there was those sorts of things over that period of time as well that I went to.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  And, uh, so I was able to do, I think my brother's 21st actually would have been smack bang in one of the middle of my operations, uh, in the first year. So I went and did things, um, yeah. No one really asks a drug dealer what they're doing tonight.

• 27:27Gemma Bath?

  That helps.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it does. No one cares. So long as you've got money for them, they don't really care what you're going to do tonight. They, they, that's sort of like you, you, you live your own life, son.

• 27:37Gemma Bath?

  It does sound like an interesting work-life balance, though. I, there was one quote that got me when you were talking about your relationship, when you said, "The fact I had to bail my wife didn't enter into the equation, it was the operation first."

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was. And that is both a, I guess, a consequence of the job, but also a personality flaw on my behalf.

• 28:02Gemma Bath?

  Well, it sounds like the kind of job you have to be all in on.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it is. Um, was I too all in on it? And, and, and it's an interesting, an interesting perspective, I guess, is the fact that all in, yes, you know, you've got to be there when it happens. But, you know, I was buying drugs off them, not them buying drugs off me. So it wasn't as if my livelihood depended on that sort of stuff. It was more, okay, I've got to do this. So there is a question about how ferociously you throw yourself into that line of work and how addictive it becomes.

• 28:39Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. Addictive, that's an interesting word. Well, Michael got to be, well, pretend to be bad and, and criminal. I, I'm assuming there's a thrill to that.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, there is. You, you know, you can understand why some people turn to that, that sort of life, because it's fun sometimes. It, it, and that's, that's probably not the right thing to say. But there is a certain, I guess, uh, thrill about doing something wrong and not getting caught. Now, in my case, it was that I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew why I was doing it was for a good reason, and I knew I couldn't get caught.

• 29:28Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. Because there were people watching you anyway.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Well, yes and no. I mean, not all the time. But yeah, so, but I knew what I was, I, I knew where the boundary was, and I knew that, um, there was leeway, not in doing something overtly illegal, um, but the buying drugs and, and, and the going out and, you know, having a good time and all that sort of stuff, that there was a limit that, you know, a line that you could go to, that if you didn't go over that line, you were still being the bad person, and you knew you couldn't get caught.

• 30:04Gemma Bath?

  In terms of lines, as an undercover, were you allowed to, if you had to, as part of the game, like, have drugs or, like, partake? Or was that, like, were there particular things that were completely off limits as a police officer?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  We got drug tested, so that would be off limits, especially hard drugs. And it's very hard not to have marijuana in your system if you're sitting in a room with a whole bunch of people smoking it. And there is this thing called simulating.

• 30:39Gemma Bath?

  So I guess you pretend to.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  You pretend to. Yeah, you don't inhale all the way. And, um, I, I remember having some really, I remember once, so I'm living in this house in King Arroy. Um, the girl I was living with, her partner was high up in a biker gang, and he's taking me out to have a chat to me on the balcony, and we were smoking. Um, I was simulating, he was smoking marijuana. And, um, funny story, I had a, a pipe that I bought, um, particularly for this job. So we, we're using this new pipe, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm simulating, he's smoking. And, um,

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I remember that I'm having this conversation, I'm outside my body going, "They're talking to you, they're talking to you, they've stopped talking, start talking now, say this." Okay, stop talking, listen to what they have to say. And it was this out-of-world experience, an out-of-body experience that I was having. It was quite freaky.

• 31:43Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, because I can imagine that it'd be an easy way for criminals to, like, catch you out, like, trying to make you have the drug.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. Um, and again, I simulated. But again, it's also that, you know, when I went, when, when we were talking about the course that I did, and the fact that they took us out, and we had people try and come to us, and you sort of think to yourself, yeah, that's not going to happen. But that's the perfect example. He got me stoned to find out who I really was.

• 32:16Gemma Bath?

  Coming up, Jason tells us about the different types of crimes he helped to uncover.

• 32:23Gemma Bath?

  I know you did a lot of, or mainly, drugs when you were undercover. Is that what the majority of undercovers are doing in Australia? Is it the drug trade, or is it other areas as well?

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Oh, no, it's other areas. So, no, um, with undercover operations, they cover everything. Um, predominantly drugs back in the nineties, because they were a big, a big political thing, and they were a big, a big, uh, issue in, in, especially Queensland, but, but most other states as well. Uh, property is another thing. So, um, people going and breaking into, to houses and stealing property and, and, you know, then, then fencing it. So I, I did a job where I was a fence and bought stolen property. Um, I had people that ran, I had

• 33:14Speaker 03

  mates that ran jobs that went for, you know, five, six months, where that's all they did. Um, and you clean up breaking in a cruise, you know, around, around the place, and, and they all get locked up for multiple breaking enters. And everyone gets their gear back because you've bought it. So it's, it's win-win. Um, Daniel Morecambe was another big one. I don't know if you know the Daniel Morecambe story. So

• 33:40Gemma Bath?

  Of course.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  They put an undercover into prison with him, pretending to be a, a, a, a major criminal, and then they all became this major, major gang that, that, uh, they were all undercover. Um, I've had friends who have done, uh, similar sort of pedophilia, type ring stuff. Um, anything you can think of that's, that's illegal, that requires evidence that's one-on-one based, then there's probably an undercover that's done it around Australia.

• 34:14Gemma Bath?

  There's, it sounds like there's more undercover police than we think.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  At one stage, there might have been. I don't know whether there are now. I think the, the, the psychological issues that have been identified through the nineties and eighties, eighties and nineties in particular, has probably cut that back. But at one stage, you know, we're talking some states had, you know, twenty, thirty squads of twenty or thirty undercovers.

• 34:45Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, wow. It's quite a lot.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 34:48Gemma Bath?

  I know that you did majority drug, kind of

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:52Gemma Bath?

  raids and, and buys and stuff like that. And it seemed to me like you would infiltrate through an informant at kind of a low-level street drug deal level, and then you would try and get your way up to the top.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Work your way out.

• 35:07Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, you would just kind of try and make relationships up the chain. Am I right in saying that? And to try and get the big dog?

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, that's correct. Some, sometimes you would, you would be introduced at a higher level. Um, but predominantly, the jobs that I did, fortunately or unfortunately, were, were mostly street level, and I had to then sort of play chess to get to the, the next level, snakes and ladders, to get to the next level, work out who was who and, and go after them.

• 35:35Gemma Bath?

  And each level was kind of more cagey?

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Yes, that's correct. Um, but then again, most people who use drugs or sell drugs are a little bit paranoid in the first place.

• 35:48Gemma Bath?

  I found it interesting that you said most of the people kind of at the top don't actually do drugs, and you were surprised by the kinds of people that were up there.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Uh, well, yeah. So the people I encountered, um, the one person that, that I got to a reasonable level at, they, as far as I'm aware, they didn't use drugs. The, I guess, the, what I was talking about in that respect in the book was that, um, one of my informants was well ensconced in the Brisbane underworld, in the sense of not the underworld as in gangsters, but the underworld or, or underbelly, to use a phrase, of, um, the elites of Brisbane and what they like to do in their downtime type of thing. And some of the stories that, um,

• 36:40Speaker 03

  she had of what these people did and didn't do, you sort of stop and you go, "Wow, okay."

• 36:53Gemma Bath?

  Well, you can't really tell who's

• 36:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 36:55Gemma Bath?

  involved.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  I can't, I, I know who was involved, I can't tell now. But, um, just by looking at people and listening to people on TV or that sort of stuff, you've got no way of telling what they're really into in their own private lives. It's, it was, from, from a point of view of me wanting to be an actor, it was great fun.

• 37:20Gemma Bath?

  It's so strange, because you get so immersed in this world and in all these, like, relationships, and then all of a sudden you're out of that operation and you're on to a new one. That must feel bizarre.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Um, no, look, you, you say you get a bit of a break between them, and you get to decompress, I guess. Um,

• 37:41Speaker 03

  And when I say decompress, it's not like you go and see a psychologist and you talk to them. Back then, it's not like you go and see a psychologist and talk to them and they give you, you know, a clean bill of health and you get all this out. It was like, you know, decompress, you'll go have a few beers with your mates and talk about the operation and all the stupid things you did and what happened. And then you've, you know, you become Jason for a little while and then got another job for you, off you go.

• 38:12Gemma Bath?

  I want to talk about one of your other informants, because I think the relationships that you formed with these people were so interesting. Susan, who you actually knew from school, tell us about that.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  So Susan was, Susan and I went to school together. I was a prefect. She was in my brother's grade. And so the school I went to was in inner city Brisbane School and very, back in those days, very strict, uniform code, you know, the boys had to wear ties, you had to wear long socks if you were wearing shorts, the girls had to wear only skin coloured tights, their skirts had to be at their knees, they had to wear berets. And every morning, Susan would come to the gate that I was on and her skirt would be rolled up and she'd be wearing

• 39:08Speaker 03

  black tights and she wouldn't have a beret on. And then every afternoon, she'd walk down the stairs to the gate, rolling her skirt up without a beret. And every morning and every afternoon, I'd say, Susan, pull your skirt down, Susan, put your beret on, Susan, make sure you're wearing coloured, skin coloured tights tomorrow.

• 39:33Gemma Bath?

  Jason, I think police officer was in you younger than you thought.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  There has been that correlation drawn once or twice.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, and then I got told of this operation. So we're talking seven years later, seven or eight years later, and I got told that I was having this operation and I was meeting Susan. And, you know, the name didn't sort of click or anything like that. It was like, uh huh. And then I sort of realised who it might be. And I didn't tell anyone, but we've gone in and met them and I've gone, huh. She didn't recognise me and I told my controller and all of that. And so in the intervening years, she'd been, she'd started taking heroin and

• 40:27Speaker 03

  got hooked on heroin. She was living with, so she would have been early twenties, she was living with a guy in his fifties. And he wanted her out of the lifestyle. So that's why she became an informant. And yeah, she didn't know who I was. And I spent a fair amount of time with her as well, to the point where I had a conversation and asked her if she knew my brother. And she said, yeah, yeah, I know him. But I knew his, I knew his brother better. He was a real four letter word. So she remembered me. She just had no idea it was me she was talking to.

• 41:10Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  And she was involved in, with a group of people who I also knew from school. One person used to bully me at high school, to the point where, you know, I left that high school and went to a new high school. And the other person was at the new high school and we were in the same group of friends. And when I say the same group of friends, my two best friends who were female, she was their best friend type thing in that group. And they had no idea who I was either.

• 41:45Gemma Bath?

  Did you change a lot in seven years? Like, how?

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Drugs.

• 41:50Gemma Bath?

  Yeah. Was it strange seeing how their lives had gone down one path and yours had gone down the complete opposite?

• 41:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's very much, there but the grace of God go I type thing. So it's funny. So the fella used to bully me at school and I remember saying, you know, one day, karma's gonna come around and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get you back for all of this. Little did I think it was gonna be arresting him for selling me drugs and putting him in jail. But the point is karma's a wonderful thing sometimes. But it, you know, when it's people you know, it is there but for the grace of God go I, you know, and I don't know whether it's my parents, whether it was my friends, whether, what it was. It would probably have to be

• 42:40Speaker 03

  on my parents and the way I was brought up. And my mum gave me the ability to, you know, so we would go out drinking at sixteen or seventeen and mum would say to me, call me and let me know where you are, but I'm not picking you up until tomorrow morning if you get arrested by the police. So she was very pragmatic in that respect, that do what you want, but there are consequences and I'm not going to bail you out. So I guess in that sense, you know, it taught me that, okay, I can make decisions. And if I make the wrong decisions, I'm on my own in that respect. And now I wouldn't have been on my own, but I have to pay the consequences and that sort of stuff. So, but I could have

• 43:22Speaker 03

  gone a completely different way and gone down that track. So there but, there but for the grace of God go I, because you just don't know how you're going to, how your life's gonna turn out from one or two simple decisions.

• 43:36Gemma Bath?

  At the other end, when these people are arrested, and I imagine when the operation's over, did you reveal to Susan who you were? You never did?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  No.

• 43:45Gemma Bath?

  What about some of these other people when they were arrested and they find out that you're an undercover cop? How did that go down?

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Well, they weren't happy, no matter what, no matter what the operation was, they weren't real happy. Especially the one fella that had been, you know, been selling to three or four separate other, three other undercover police officer at the same time. He wasn't very happy. Bit of shock. You know, I had one, one fella, a Vietnamese fellow, it was like, you know, you were selling drugs to an undercover police officer. And he goes, no, no, no, I wasn't. And they brought me in and he's gone, hey Mick. And I've gone, hey, and they've gone, do you know Michael? He goes, yeah, yeah, I know Michael. He goes, you've sold drugs to Michael? He said, no, no, no, no, no. Michael gave me money. I got drugs, gave them to Michael.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Right. But yeah, so, you know, they weren't happy, but again, a lot of them would have thought, it's a game. And they got caught.

• 44:53Gemma Bath?

  Tell me about the time that you made a man confess to murder.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  I don't know if I made him confess to murder. I got put into a cell with a person who had allegedly committed a double murder. And my job was to try and get a confession out of him. And so I've gone in there. Now, this was my first job. So I'd literally had a cast taken off my leg to a day before, or two days before, something or other, because I'd broken my ankle sailing. And I get put in there, so I'm limping and that sort of stuff. And I don't know whether it was that, but he had worked doing rehabilitation for injuries and that sort of stuff. He was like a karate expert, which they didn't tell me

• 45:38Speaker 03

  until afterwards. And so he was involved in that sort of stuff. And it was sort of like a natural, you know, how did you do that? What were you doing, rah rah rah rah?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  And it was like, and, you know, yeah, okay. So what are you in here for? And he sort of said, oh, did you see all the media outside? And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that for you? And it was like, I killed someone and then killed someone else. And it was like, oh.

• 46:07Gemma Bath?

  That does feel like it was easy.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  And what was hard was then I then had to spend another couple of hours in there trying to get him to say more. Once he'd given the confession, that was it. He was, he had big noted himself and that was all he wanted to do.

• 46:23Gemma Bath?

  Who had he murdered?

• 46:25Speaker 03

  So back in the mid nineties, there was, it was in Melbourne. And there was a motoring rider and his wife had been murdered. And they were buried, they'd been buried beside the pool. And he stole a Porsche and drove to Brisbane. And there was a huge mad man hunt for him and it was televised on TV. And he got caught on the Gold Coast. He tried to blame the girlfriend, who was the daughter. She tried to blame him. There were five trials and he eventually got found guilty of a double murder.

• 47:08Gemma Bath?

  Are you scared being in a cell with someone like that? Are you often scared in this job, in the undercover world?

• 47:16Speaker 03

  It's funny because one of the questions I got asked when I was giving evidence was, oh, surely, you know, if he'd done something, everyone was watching and listening. So they would have come to your, your aid. It was like, no, they weren't. I had, would have had to yell really, really, really loudly and hope that someone came running, which I think they would have. But so was I scared? I don't know if scared is the right word. The only time I've been really scared was, was a drug buy I did, where I thought I was going to get topped or killed, just by the way it went about, because I pushed the, the job, I pushed the introduction a lot quicker and a lot harder than, than I probably would

• 48:00Speaker 03

  have. And the way that the buy was done, I literally thought, that's it. So I was very scared then. But I don't know if I was ever that scared any other time. I had a heightened sense of awareness when I was in the cell. I was wearing a tape recorder then too. So I did wear it another time. And that can be embarrassing too, because when you spend a number of hours in a cell and all you've got to drink is water, there are certain, there are certain sounds that the jury just laughs at when they hear them.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Um, and uh, so yeah, I don't know if scared's the right word.

• 48:52Gemma Bath?

  Surely there's some fear when, you know, not just in that cell, but maybe you're in a car with a, you know, a drug dealer that is known to be dangerous and you're by yourself and what if he finds out? Because you had quite a few close calls. I mean, you've already talked about a few of them where they turned up outside your house, where they took your laptop. Like, did those kinds of instances, like invoke fear for you?

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Y- yes, concern. And it's, it's hard to explain that, you know, there were, actually, there's probably another time when I was actually scared, not scared, concerned. We were, we were going somewhere where I didn't know we were actually going. The plan was to take my car, but we were taking their car. And so there was, there was, you know, I was a little bit worried about where we were going and what we were doing because we're actually heading back towards Logan, where I was a police officer. And so that was a sort of, okay, where am I going?

• 49:50Speaker 03

  But I was always aware of how I could get out of a situation. I always used my car. And that's because I always knew how I was going to get away if something happened. I was always aware of the escape route, even to the point where I was talking about where we were driving with this guy. I, I knew whether the, the doors were unlocked or locked and I knew with where we were going. I was always scanning ahead. Okay. Can I open the car if he stops at a light and get out and that sort of stuff? So there was always that. It wasn't, so it wasn't panic. It wasn't scared. It wasn't fear.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  It was more, I, I don't know how, how to rationalize it. It's, it was just part of the job. I know that sounds really, really weird.

• 50:40Gemma Bath?

  Well, it sounds like you're in a state of kind of hyper awareness.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Hypervigilance, yeah.

• 50:45Gemma Bath?

  Hypervigilance, hyper awareness. You also talk a lot about gut feeling and instinct.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:52Gemma Bath?

  How important was that?

• 50:55Speaker 03

  I think pretty important. Um, you know, my entire policing career was gut instinct. And you'll find a lot of policing is gut instinct. The ability, the ability to work out when something's not quite right is how most criminals get caught. So, uh, surely, sure, they do something that gives them away, but a lot of times it's something just not being right. It's a gut feeling. And, um, you know, and I would, I would go so far as the same that, that with you, when you're talking to people, doing a podcast and you'll have spoken to, you know,

• 51:39Speaker 03

  hundreds of people, you get an understanding when something's not quite right as well. You can't put your finger on it, but it's just a gut feel and you learn to trust that.

• 51:54Gemma Bath?

  Tell us about the time you handed over $11,000 of police money to a drug dealer who then left with that money instead of being arrested.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. The, you know, one of the first things they tell you is don't hand over the money in a buy bust. Because once it's theirs, it's very hard to get back. And, um, so we were doing a buy bust. And it was at the airport and, uh, the, the, there was a phrase that I had to say, which I said, if no one turned up when I said the phrase, the next thing was I get out of the car. And if I got out of the car, that was the, the visual clue. Come and grab him. He's, he's, he's agreed to the deal. And so I did, because the money was in the back of the car. And I took the money, got back in the car, still no one turning up to grab him.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  And had to hand him the money and he gave me the heroin luckily. And, uh, yeah, he got out, walked back and I thought, okay, well, they're gonna grab him as he walked back to his car. No, he gets in his car and he drives off. And I was like, what the hell just happened? I went, oh, did you say the word? Yeah, I said the line. Oh, well, we thought, because you got out of the car, I said, but getting out of the car was the, the second cue.

• 53:13Gemma Bath?

  Oh, no.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  We, it was like, righto. So everything was perfectly planned. And it's just one of those things that sometimes they just don't go the way that he's supposed to, you know? It's just unbelievable.

• 53:30Gemma Bath?

  Even the best laid plans.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. Um, and again, that comes down to, to, you know, someone's gut feel thought, oh, it hasn't finished yet.

• 53:41Gemma Bath?

  How did, we've alluded to it a few times, but did, how did this job affect your relationships? Do you think it negatively affected your marriage?

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely. I enjoyed being Michael more than I enjoyed being Jason.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Now, that's not to say there weren't issues in the relationship previously. For various reasons to do with both sides of things. And, um, I'm not going to sit here and say that I didn't do the wrong thing, um, in relation to, to exploiting some of those things.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  I did. It's entirely on me. But I was given the opportunity to do that by being someone else. If I, if I didn't have that opportunity, would I have

• 54:40Speaker 03

  exploited those issues? Is a separate question that I can't answer because I was not, and, and so I was able to be Michael and I was able to meet women and pretend I wasn't Jason. Now, that's wrong. Um, you know, the, my ex-wife spoke to me finally after

• 55:03Speaker 03

  20 odd years. Um, well, she sent me a text and sort of said, I didn't realize what you were going through. I didn't realize it had that much effect on you.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  And there were other issues on, on her side in regards to her father doing a similar job and that sort of thing. And that causing anxiety for her. So there was, and rather than saying, oh, okay, well, I'm not going to do it. I just went, yeah, well, that's your problem. Let me do it. Do you know what I mean? Not knowing that I was going to become, and again, it could be a personality flaw, all, all consumed by Michael.

• 55:38Gemma Bath?

  Tell me about the effects that this job has had on you psychologically.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  So not just, um, working undercover, policing in general. I, I left the police in 2004 and I thought I got out unscathed. So I thought I got out and I had no issues. There was nothing wrong with me.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  Over, you know, that period of time, people had said to me, you've changed, you know, you're, you're a lot more short with people. You lose your temper, all that sort of stuff. It was like, no, I just don't think you understand policing.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  I don't think you understand that that's just who I am. I mean, I remember having a conversation with a manager about the fact that I was working in travel and it was all females and me. And that the, the team felt intimidated when I spoke. And it was like, well, what do you mean? And they said, well, you, you, you talk very loudly and you talk really aggressively. And I'm going, no, I don't. That's, that's just me. That's just who I am.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  And that became a common theme. That's just who I am. That's just me. It's just because that's what you need to do as a police officer. I'm not being aggressive. I'm not being angry. I'm not being this, that, or anything else. It's just who I am. Until one day, recently, when I say recently, 18 months ago, almost two years ago now, I had a huge breakdown at work. I posted something on Facebook. One of my colleagues thought they were doing the right thing by telling the office about it, by telling work about it.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  That then meant that they stood me down and they were investigating whether I was going to be sacked. And when we say a real meltdown, it was like a real meltdown. And I got to a point where I was lying in bed. I couldn't get out of bed.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  And I thought to myself, you know what? Can't do this anymore. I'm gone. That's it. I'm tapping out. And that scared me. And I called my doctor. Uh, and this, my doctor is, I, I've seen my doctor since I was about 10 years old.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  So I'm 56 now, um, and he won't want me telling anyone how old he is, but, and I still see him. So he went, okay, yep, here's what you're going to do. We're gonna get you to a psychologist.

• 58:30Speaker 03

  I'm gonna put you on some medication, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so he put me on medication and I went and saw a psychologist. And I saw a psychologist every two weeks for six months and then every month. And now I see him every six months.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  And now I don't have PTSD because I haven't been officially, uh, what's the word?

• 58:53Gemma Bath?

  Diagnosed.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have something that's similar to it. It's been caused by my time in the police and me not dealing with that and not, not, you know, talking. So it's not just the undercover, but the undercover gave me an escape to be someone else and I lost who I was. And then coming back to the police and the police going, you're nothing but a, uh, you know, a druggie who's burnt out, who doesn't care about rules. And having that opinion of the family that I thought I belonged to and trying to go back and, and be a good little police officer.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  And then having the same things that would have caused the issues for me, you know, like I said, the, the first day on the job, I went to a traffic accident. Prior to that, there was, I was in Cairns and we had an Orphans Christmas party. So in Cairns, anyone who didn't have family in Cairns, and even if you did have family, who was a police officer, you went to this house and had Christmas Day there. And there was a pool and you had a pool party and we had Christmas lunch and we had Christmas dinner. That morning, Christmas morning, there was a double murder suicide or triple murder suicide of family. And the police who had gone there came to the, the Orphans Christmas party. And it's not hard to be affected by what they

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  saw, even though you didn't see it.

• 1:00:23Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Put on top of that, traffic accidents, body in a caravan in Cairns after 10 days in the middle of summer.

• 1:00:31Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  You know, suicides, murders, domestics, even to the point where a cat that got run over and I've picked it up and we've stopped and I've said, you know, does anyone know of a, um, an open vet clinic where I can take it to it? And someone's just gone, yeah, Dr. Ruger. And I didn't click Ruger is a, a brand of firearm.

• 1:00:53Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean? And it, all those sorts of things

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  compounding on you where you're just supposed to go, okay, yep, suck that up, not a problem. Some people, it affects them much sooner. I walked out thinking there was nothing wrong.

• 1:01:11Gemma Bath?

  And then all these years later.

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  And all these years later, worked out that, that is what the issue is. There are a lot of people in that boat. There are a lot of police officers in that boat. And I, I, and I, I take it back to the most common complaint that you hear is when you pull someone over and it's like, why aren't you out catching real criminals? And, you know, seven times out of 10, the police officer is going to give them a gob full. It's got nothing to do with that comment. It could be yesterday, they went to a, to a Sid's death, or they went to whatever

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  two months ago, six months ago, 12 months ago. And that stupid comment has just, everything's built up and they've just lost, lost the ability to filter. And that was what I was doing. I was getting angry. I was taking offence to things that were being said to me because I'm supposed to be an expert. And there were people who I thought didn't have the same experience as me, telling me I was wrong.

• 1:02:17Gemma Bath?

  Now that you have these realisations, now that you've been to therapy,

• 1:02:22Gemma Bath?

  is it a weight off your shoulders, being able to understand?

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Gemma Bath?

  What happened and why you feel like this?

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Definitely. And, you know, I've got a lot of penance, not, penance maybe isn't the right word, but

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  I, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this word, but I acted like a real prick for a number of years. And there are a lot of people that, that I have to, to apologise to and make amends to. Not, not in a, in a, uh, a seven steps type way, but in a way that, you know, I've probably said and done things that, that I shouldn't have, that I thought were justified when you look back now, weren't. And, and I guess part of me coming on, on podcasts like this, part of me writing the book and getting the book out there was to, to sort of get that story out and then use that. I am making a documentary on PTSD and

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  policing. And that's the next big project that I've got after this book is, is showing that to police, that if you get angry or irritable about something, that's probably the first sign that you've got PTSD. And to people in the public to say that, you know, we expect these people to go and do this thing and do these things and see things and deal with people that you and I wouldn't deal with. And that, um, we then criticise them in a split second when something goes wrong.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  And we expect them to be all happy, shiny people

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  whenever, whenever we criticise them or, or say something. And, and life doesn't work that way. And, and you have to understand that what we're asking them to do has a profound effect on them and will have to the point where some of them will think the best way out is to end their life. And that shouldn't be the case.

• 1:04:22Gemma Bath?

  No. I know that there is more psychological support available to police officers now, but do you think there's enough?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  No, no. And anecdotally, people still won't use it because the concern is that there's always someone looking to climb the ladder that's going to use that against you.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  And we, we have such, that if you've got a psychological injury,

• 1:04:57Speaker 03

  then the biggest thing is to get rid of you because then that, it comes down to a financial or pecuniary.

• 1:05:04Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. It's still considered taboo, isn't it?

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  It is. And, you know, that's a big issue. And whilst ever lawyers are involved, and they think they can make money out of it, then you're not going to have the ability for people to get the help that they need. Because there's always going to be, oh, so they didn't do that for you. How much money can we get out of it?

• 1:05:27Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  Whereas it should just be, how much help can we get out of it?

• 1:05:33Gemma Bath?

  I can see that the, the times are changing. It's just that they're not changing fast enough.

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  No, they're, they're not. And, you know, it, it's funny. So I worked in, um, international development, which is the aid programmes, uh, overseas. Um, and I was working on the justice programme in Papua New Guinea. And one of the things around that we were working on was violence against women and family violence. And the, the research was that it was going to take over a hundred years for the way men treat women and family violence to change through education.

• 1:06:17Gemma Bath?

  I have heard that statistic. It's very depressing.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  It is very depressing. But if, if it takes a hundred years there, you're looking at a good 50 years before things change here. And considering we've only just started down this, uh, this idea of understanding PTSD and policing in the last 10 years, you've got another 40 years before it becomes something where real, meaningful work is being done.

• 1:06:43Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. Jason, with all of this in mind, is there anything you miss about the police force, about being undercover, about that chapter of your life?

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  Driving fast with lights and sirens?

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  And you know what? That, that is such a thrill. It's, it's, I, I, and I also miss the, the, the fact that

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  no job is ever the same. And there's always a little bit of danger and you're always going to, you know, you never know what you're going to come up against. I also think that I could probably be a much more effective police officer now, understanding the impact that it had on me than I ever was

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  previously. Um, now, the, the fact of the matter is, I would never be allowed to be a police officer again because I'm on medication and they probably wouldn't take me. And I will be on medication for the rest of my life. Um, and that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. And, and, you know, and, and because I see a psychologist all the time, I wouldn't get back in because I have, you know, pre-existing conditions.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Which is a strange way of looking at it because I'm getting treatment and I'm getting the help I need. They're not giving that treatment and the help they need. And there are people that are suffering way more than I ever have.

• 1:08:03Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:05Gemma Bath?

  Thank you so much for joining us, Jason, and for, one, taking us into your underworld, undercover life, but also of raising the awareness that we need to be speaking about more when it comes to PTSD and police.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 1:08:23Gemma Bath?

  Thank you to Jason for joining us on this episode. You can find a link to his book in our show notes. Make sure you're following our show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify for updates on this story and all the stories we cover. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.