Full Transcript for Why Good Undercover Cops Think Like Psychopaths

even think it was plan Z at the time that it happened. 00:03:25 Speaker 1: You wanted to be an actor. How do you go from acting to police officer? 00:03:30 Speaker 3: It's going to 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. 00:03:43 Speaker 1: What did the people around you think about that? 00:03:47 Speaker 3: 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 authority was not my strong point. 00:04:00 Speaker 1: So you'd had run-ins with the law? I didn't think you could join the police if you had. 00:04:03 Speaker 3: No, no, no, no. Just I questioned authority a lot. 00:04:07 Speaker 1: Gotcha. 00:04:09 Speaker 3: 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. 00:04:23 Speaker 1: 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? 00:04:37 Speaker 3: I thought it was great. 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 the 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. 00:05:08 Speaker 1: I'm curious as to what you mean when you say that it wasn't what you expected or what people would expect. 00:05:16 Speaker 3: 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 ate McDonald's and wrote traffic tickets and took, you know, brown paper bags of money off drug dealers. 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, you know, all day standing in the middle of a road in Cairns in summer at a traffic accident. 00:06:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:06:03 Speaker 3: 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. 00:06:20 Speaker 1: Tell me about your first kind of toe dip into the undercover world because it happened by chance in a taxi. 00:06:28 Speaker 3: 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 fiancé, 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. You know, I probably still look like a copper now. But I had short hair, you know, I was clean cut, I was wearing a polo shirt and jeans, typical copper dress. I even had my badge in my back pocket that you could see the outline of when you stood up. It was a 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 immediately 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. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: Well, they asked you to do a buy bust. 00:07:52 Speaker 3: That's correct. 00:07:53 Speaker 1: What exactly does that mean? 00:07:54 Speaker 3: So a buy bust is where, 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. 00:08:12 Speaker 1: 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? 00:08:22 Speaker 3: I was nervous. So, you know, I tried to scruffy 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. But it was kind of surreal because I was going, well, I don't know what I'm doing here. And then I went into 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 train station, so it looked like I walked up out of the train station. But I had a recording device. Now, the recording device is the size of a matchbox, and the only place it would go was in my jocks. 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. 00:09:52 Speaker 1: Well, I can imagine you never put the recording device there again. 00:09:56 Speaker 3: No, 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 recording device. 00:10:14 Speaker 1: So how did that first bust go? Was it successful? 00:10:16 Speaker 3: Yeah. I was very successful. He sold me the ecstasy. He got grabbed. He told me not to say anything. 00:10:26 Speaker 1: You got fake arrested? 00:10:27 Speaker 3: Yep, got fake arrested, got put in the car. And he ended up becoming an informant. 00:10:36 Speaker 2: Oh, really? 00:10:36 Speaker 1: So he flipped? 00:10:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, which is what most people do because, you know, they don't want to go to jail. It's surprising. The human psyche of, oh, I'm not going to dob my mates in until it's my backside that's in the sling 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. 00:11:10 Speaker 1: Really? 00:11:11 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:11:12 Speaker 1: Did that buy bust happen? give you a taste for it? I can imagine there's like a level of adrenaline doing something like that. 00:11:18 Speaker 3: 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, the course. So there was a course coming up for, for COVID police. a course that the police do to train you to become an undercover police officer. And I got asked to apply for it and I did. And the rest, they say, is history. 00:11:45 Speaker 1: How do they pick who is going to be a part of that? Was that by-bust essentially your addition? 00:11:50 Speaker 3: It played a part in it. Yeah, it showed that I was able 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 things we had, we had two days of psychometric testing that we had to do. And 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 undercover police officer is is the same as a psychopath, that they're both very good at becoming other people, 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. 00:12:46 Speaker 1: That's so interesting. Do you think you fell into that kind of bucket? 00:12:51 Speaker 3: I believe so, yes. The one thing I said that I took away from working undercover, was that I'm very good at lying. And when you think about it, that is a very psychopathic thing to say. 00:13:08 Speaker 1:

Yeah, to be good at lying as well. And to not feel bad about it in the moment, I don't think I'd be able to keep it up for as long as you had to. 00:13:18 Speaker 3: I justified it by the fact that it was a game. 00:13:22 Speaker 2: So.... 00:13:24 Speaker 3: 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 depending on who I was dealing with. But if I looked at it as a game, then I could understand and rationalise with my empathetic person that they knew the risks going in and that's their problem. 00:13:52 Speaker 1: What kinds of things do you learn about in an undercover course? 00:13:57 Speaker 3: Lots of things. Small things, counting money. 00:14:03 Speaker 1: Because I guess if you're not a criminal, you haven't had to do it. 00:14:06 Speaker 3: Well, unless you're a shopkeeper. Nowadays, you wouldn't count money because who has money? But you know, not putting money down, being able to hold money and count it folded and that sort of thing. 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. 00:14:35 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:14:38 Speaker 3: And it was very interesting. But just things like, you know, how to spot a real diamond, you know, we were put under pressure in certain situations to see how we react. We were, 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, Oh, I said mate again, didn't I? So trying to get that out. Now, I 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 used to get hit about five times a day. So it obviously didn't work but those sorts of things, lots of other things. Learning about drugs. The closest thing I'd come to drugs was marijuana at high school, hard drugs. knew nothing about them. I knew what they were, but I, you know, I wouldn't know, you know, how much a gram of anything was 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 that sort of stuff. Luckily, I didn't. 00:16:11 Speaker 1: So they were undercover trying to get you to basically come out from being undercover? 00:16:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, just to sort of say. So 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'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, not out of place because we were in, you know, 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 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, in the back of your mind when you're going, was this a test? 00:17:00 Speaker 1: It sounds very TV, Jason. 00:17:04 Speaker 3: 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 then I spent a lot of time sitting around transcribing tapes and doing notes. So the TV part of it would be 20% maybe. 00:17:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, right. 00:17:27 Speaker 3: Then everything else is boring. 00:17:31 Speaker 1: After the break, Jason tells us more about his undercover life and the role of his controller. I found the terminology really interesting. Can you tell us about the set-up? Because you kept referring to your controller. 00:17:50 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:17:50 Speaker 1: What does that mean? 00:17:51 Speaker 3: So... Back in the bad old days, prior to the early, so the late 80s and going back into, you know, 30, 40 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 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 crime operations squad that you were doing the job. So I was doing drugs, so I got a drug detective as my controller. If I'd been doing a property job, I would have had a property 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 police headquarters and, they would make sure that I was safe. They would make sure that if I was having any issues, I would talk to them 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. Actually, I didn't, but he had a heart attack. It's just one of those things that you sort of got relatively close and you're able to confide in them about stuff and, you know, I still have memories of one of my controllers going to his place and they had young kids and sitting there on a Saturday morning talking about the drugs that I bought the night before, watching the Wiggles with him. Do you know what I mean? It's that kind of surrealness to it. 00:19:33 Speaker 1: What do you mean you gave one of your controllers a heart attack? 00:19:36 Speaker 3: 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, when I say on the floor, so he was at work and he had an actual heart attack. Wow. And I couldn't get hold of him. Policing does that to you, apparently. 00:19:54 Speaker 1: Well, I can imagine that job, being a controller, would be very stressful as well because your life is in their hands. 00:20:02 Speaker 3: Yeah, not so much in their hands, more they have to be able to control you or rein you in because otherwise, you know, for example, and in the book you'll have seen this, that one of the operations I did, I had a direct relationship with two targets and the informant. 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 the reactions were. A controller's job is to make sure that I've got enough, that they've got enough of my trust to tell them that, if that makes sense. So 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? 00:21:00 Speaker 1: 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, kind of a uniform, a look? Like, how does all that work? 00:21:12 Speaker 3: The backstory, yes, because they've already spoken to the informant. So the discussion is going to be, okay, well, what's going to suit you? 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 when it comes to look, And the type of person, I treated it like an acting gig to a sense. It was like a character. Okay, well, what's this character? 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. 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 just depended on what the target needed me to be. 00:22:14 Speaker 1: Look at that acting desire coming full circle. 00:22:18 Speaker 3: Yes, I know. 00:22:19 Speaker 1: Did you get a fake house and did you have to live there throughout the whole operation or how did that work with your normal personal life? 00:22:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, so we had safe houses and I had one of the first safe houses I had was at Highgate Hill and it got broken into and they stole a police computer and my computer that I do my notes on. And 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. 00:23:01 Speaker 1: That feels like a flaw. 00:23:02 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think. Anyway, so the place was

easy to break into. What they'd done is they'd actually, the apartment block was being painted. So there was a painter's gantry and they've just, going up every floor and Jimmy lifted the doors and going around. And I woke up that night and I'd gone, what's going on here? I just woke up feeling uneasy. And what I'd actually done is I had a bag on the table and I'd taken my gun out of the bag the night before and hidden it. 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, I 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. 00:24:06 Speaker 1: There's no problem. Could have been a lot worse, yeah. 00:24:10 Speaker 3: If I'd had my gun closer to me, that could have been a lot worse too. 00:24:14 Speaker 1: But Jason, how does this work? Because you've mentioned you had a fiance. You got married to this woman during all of this. And how do you maintain a relationship when you're living in a random house, playing some different person for large portions of time? 00:24:31 Speaker 3: I would say, so we weren't living together prior to getting married because that was back in the, you know, in the 90s. Not a lot of people did that sort of thing. 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? And I would come back every now and then to the house and 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 neighbor used to be a bikey, um, and scared the living daylights out of the guys that were sitting outside me, that my, my, um, cover could have been blown. Um, uh, 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 that sort of helped. But sometimes living and working in Brisbane, you forgot that you were this other person sometimes and those sort of things could have happened. 00:25:49 Speaker 1: Because how long on average were your operations? 00:25:56 Speaker 3: Four or five months. 00:25:58 Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. 00:25:59 Speaker 1: So you'd be living in a safe house or safe houses for this four or five months and would you get like weekends off or a day off here to go and see? 00:26:09 Speaker 3: There was one operation I did in Kingaroy and I would take off for a couple of days because my controller, she was married as well, so she would have to go home and spend time. So we'd just take off and go back and spend a couple of days in Brisbane and and then go

back to work, so to speak, living in Kingaroy. 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. And there were times that I got rung at home where I had to sort of, you know, be Michael and pretend 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. So it wasn't like I never saw home 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. And 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 in the first year. So I went and did things, you know, No one really asks a drug dealer what they're doing tonight. 00:27:33 Speaker 1: That helps. 00:27:34 Speaker 3: 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. It's sort of like you live your own life, son. 00:27:42 Speaker 1: It does sound like an interesting work-life balance though. There was one quote that got me when you were talking about your relationship when you said the fact I had to bail on my wife didn't enter into the equation, it was the operation first. 00:27:56 Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. And that is both a, I guess, a consequence of the job, but also a personality flaw on my behalf. 00:28:07 Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like the kind of job you have to be all in on. 00:28:10 Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. Was I too all in on it? And it's 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. 00:28:46 Speaker 1: Addictive, that's an interesting word. Well, Michael got to be, well, pretend to be bad and criminal. I'm assuming there's a thrill to that. 00:28:56 Speaker 3: Yeah, there is. You know, you can understand why some people turn to that sort of life because it's fun sometimes. And that's probably not the right thing to say, but there is a certain, I guess. 00:29:20 Speaker 3: 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. 00:29:33 Speaker 1: Because there were people watching you anyway. 00:29:36 Speaker 3: Well, yes and no. I mean, not all the time, but yeah. So But I knew where the boundary was and I knew that there was leeway, not in doing something overtly illegal, but the buying drugs and the going out and having a good time and all that sort of stuff, that there was 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. 00:30:09 Speaker 1: 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? 00:30:26 Speaker 3: We got drug tested, so that would be off limits, especially hard drugs. 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. 00:30:44 Speaker 1: So I guess you pretend to. 00:30:47 Speaker 3: You pretend to, yeah. You don't inhale all the way. And I remember having some really, I remember once, so I'm living in this house in Kingaroy. 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. I was simulating he was smoking marijuana. And funny story, I had a pipe that I bought and particularly for this job. So we're using this new pipe and I'm simulating he's smoking and 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, out-of-body experience that I was having. It was quite freaky. 00:31:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, because I can imagine that it would be an easy way for criminals to like catch you out, like trying to make you have the drug. 00:31:58 Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and again, I simulated. But again, it's also that, you know, 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. 00:32:22 Speaker 1: Coming up, Jason tells us about the different types of crimes he helped to uncover. I know you did a lot of. 00:32:32 Speaker 1: 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? 00:32:42 Speaker 3: Oh, no, it's other areas. So, no, um... With undercover operations, they cover everything. Predominantly drugs back in the 90s because they were a big political thing and they were a big issue, especially Queensland, but most other states as well. Property is another thing. So people going and breaking into houses and stealing property and, you know, then fencing it. So I did a job where I was a fence and bought stolen property. Um, I had people that ran, I had mates that ran jobs that went for, you know, five, six months where that's all they did. Um, and you clean up break and enter crews, you know, around, around the place and they

all get locked up for multiple break and 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. 00:33:45 Speaker 1: Of course. 00:33:46 Speaker 3: So they put an undercover into prison with him pretending to be a major criminal and then they all became this major gang that they were all undercover. I've had friends who have done similar sort of pedophilia type ring stuff. 00:34:08 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:34:10 Speaker 3: Anything you can think of that's illegal, that requires evidence that's one-on-one based, then there's probably an undercover that's done it around Australia. 00:34:20 Speaker 1: It sounds like there's more undercover police than we think. 00:34:23 Speaker 3: At one stage there might have been. I don't know whether there are now. I think the psychological issues that have been identified through the 90s and 80s, 80s and 90s in particular... has probably cut that back. But at one stage, you know, we're talking some states had, you know, 20, 30 squads of 20 or 30 undercovers. 00:34:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, wow. 00:34:51 Speaker 1: It's quite a lot. I know that you did majority drug kind of raids 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 level. drug deal level and then you would try and get your way up to the top. Yeah, you would just kind of try and make relationships up the chain. Am I right in saying that? To try and get the big dog. 00:35:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's correct. Sometimes you would be introduced at a higher level, but predominantly the jobs that I did, fortunately or unfortunately, 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 go after them. 00:35:41 Speaker 1: And each level was kind of more cagey. 00:35:44 Speaker 3: Yes, that's correct. But then again, most people who use drugs or sell drugs are a little bit paranoid in the first place. 00:35:54 Speaker 1: 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. 00:36:04 Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so the people I encountered, the one person that I got to a reasonable level, as far as I'm aware, they didn't use drugs. I guess what I was talking about in that respect in the book was that 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 underbelly. to use a phrase, of the elites of Brisbane and what they like to do in their downtime type of thing. And some of the stories that she had of what these people did and didn't do, you sort of stop and you go, wow, okay. 00:36:56 Speaker 1: Well, you can't really tell who's... No. 00:37:01 Speaker 3: Involved. I know who

was involved. I can't tell now. But 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 was, from a point of view of me wanting to be an actor, it was great fun. 00:37:26 Speaker 1: 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. 00:37:40 Speaker 3: No, look, so you get a bit of a break between them and you get to decompress, I guess. 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, you decompress, you 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. 00:38:18 Speaker 1: 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. 00:38:30 Speaker 3: 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 an inner city Brisbane school and very, back in those days, very strict school. 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 black tights and she wouldn't have her 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 skin coloured tights tomorrow. 00:39:37 Speaker 1: Jason, I think police officer was in you younger than you thought. 00:39:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, probably. There has been that correlation drawn once or twice. Yeah. 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 started taking heroin and got hooked on heroin. She was living with, so she would have been early 20s, she was living with a guy in his 50s. And he wanted her out of the lifestyle so that's why she became and 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 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. Yeah, well. And she was involved 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. 00:41:51 Speaker 1: Did you change a lot in seven years? Like how? 00:41:54 Speaker 3: Drugs. 00:41:55 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:41:56 Speaker 1: Was it strange seeing how their lives had gone down one path and yours had gone down the complete opposite? 00:42:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's very much there but the grace of God go I type thing. 00:42:08 Speaker 1: So.... 00:42:11 Speaker 3: It's funny. So the fella used to bully me at school and I remember saying, you know, one day karma's going to come around and I'm going to get you back for all of this. Little did I think it was going to be arresting him for selling me drugs and putting him in jail. But the point is karma's a wonderful thing sometimes. But 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 was my parents, whether it was my friends, whether what it was. It would probably have to be 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 16 or 17 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 I wouldn't have been on my own but I have to pay the consequences and that sort of stuff. But I could have gone a completely different way and gone down that track. So there but for the grace of God go I because you just don't know how you're going to, how your life's going to turn out from one or two simple decisions. 00:43:42 Speaker 1: 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. No. 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? 00:43:57 Speaker 3: Oh, well, they weren't happy no matter what the operation was. They weren't real happy, especially the one fellow that had 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 fella, a Vietnamese fella, 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 going, hey, Mick. And I've gone, hey. And they've gone, do you know Michael? He goes, yeah, 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. 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. 00:44:58 Speaker 1: Tell me about the time that you made a man confess to murder. 00:45:02 Speaker 3: 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 and Now, this was my first job, so I literally had a cast taken off my leg a day before or two days before or 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 until afterwards. Okay. 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? 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. 00:46:11 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:13 Speaker 1: That does feel like it was easy. 00:46:14 Speaker 3: 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 had big-noted himself and that was all he wanted to do. 00:46:28 Speaker 1: Who had he murdered? 00:46:31 Speaker 3: So back in the mid-' 90s, there was– it was in Melbourne– and there was a motoring writer 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 manhunt for him and it was televised on TV and he got caught in 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. 00:47:14 Speaker 1: Are you scared being in a cell with someone like that? Are you often scared in this job, in the undercover world? 00:47:22 Speaker 3:

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 aid. It was like, no, they weren't. I would have had to yell really, really, really loudly and hope that someone came running. which I think they would have. So was I scared? I don't know if scared is the right word. The only time I've been really scared 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 job. I pushed the introduction a lot quicker and a lot harder than I probably would 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 sounds that the jury just laughs at when they hear them. Oh. And so I don't know if scared's the right word. 00:48:58 Speaker 1: 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 happen? like invoke fear for you? 00:49:24 Speaker 3: Yes, concern. And it's hard to explain that, you know, actually there's probably another time when I was actually scared, not scared, concerned. 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, you know, I was a little bit worried about where we were going and what we were doing because we were actually heading back towards Logan where I was a police officer and so that was a sort of, okay, where am I going? 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 knew whether 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. So it wasn't panic, it wasn't scared, it wasn't fear. Yeah. it was more, I don't know how to rationalise it. It was just part of the job. I know that sounds really, really weird. 00:50:46 Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like you're in a state of kind of hyper-awareness. 00:50:50 Speaker 3: Hyper-vigilance, yeah. 00:50:51 Speaker 1: Hyper-vigilance, hyper-awareness. You also talk a lot about gut feeling and instinct. 00:50:56 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:50:57 Speaker 1: How important was that? 00:51:01 Speaker 3: I think pretty important. You know, My entire policing career was gut instinct. And you'll find a lot of policing is gut instinct. The ability to work out when something's not quite right is how most criminals get caught. So 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. 00:51:35 Speaker 3: You know, I would go so far as to say that with you, when you're talking to people doing a podcast and you'll have spoken to, you know, 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. 00:52:00 Speaker 1: 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. 00:52:09 Speaker 3: Yeah. 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 so we were doing a buy bust and it was at the airport and, yeah, 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'd get out of the car and if I got out of the car, that was the visual clue, come and grab him, 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. and they hand him the money, and he gave me the heroin, luckily. And, yeah, he got out, walked back, and I thought, okay, well, they're going to 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? And he went, oh, did you say the word? I went, 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 second cue, right? Oh, no. And 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 you're supposed to, you know. It's just unbelievable. 00:53:36 Speaker 1: Even the best laid plans. 00:53:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. And, again, that comes down to, you know, someone's gut feel, thought, oh, it hasn't finished yet. 00:53:47 Speaker 1: How did... We've alluded to it a few times, but how did this job affect your relationships? Do you think it negatively affected your marriage? 00:53:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I enjoyed being Michael more than I enjoyed being Jason. 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 I'm not going to sit here and say that I didn't do the wrong thing in relation to exploiting some of those

things. I did. It's entirely on me. But I was given the opportunity to do that by being someone else. If I didn't have that opportunity, would I have exploited those issues and is a separate question that I can't answer because I was not. 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. You know, my ex-wife spoke to me finally after 20-odd years. Well, she sent me a text and sort of said, I didn't realise what you were going through. I didn't realise it had that much effect on you. And there were other issues 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, 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 consumed by Michael. 00:55:44 Speaker 1: Tell me about the effects that this job has had on you psychologically, So not. 00:55:50 Speaker 3: Just working undercover, policing in general. Okay. 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. Over, you know, that period of time, people had said to me, you've changed, you know, 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. 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 team felt intimidated when I spoke. And it was like, well, what do you mean? They said, well, you talk very loudly and you talk really aggressively. And I'm going, no, I don't. That's just me. That's just who I am. 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. 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. 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. And my doctor is, I've seen my doctor since I was about 10 years old. So I'm 56 now 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 going to get you to a psychologist. I'm going to 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. And now I don't have PTSD because I haven't been officially, what's the word? 00:58:59 Speaker 1: Diagnosed. 00:59:00 Speaker 3: 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, 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, 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 be a good little police officer. And then having the same things that would have caused the issues for me. Like I said, the first day on the job, I went to a traffic accident. Prior to that, 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, a family. And the police who had gone there came to the orphans' Christmas party and it's not hard to be affected by what they saw even though you didn't see it. Put on top of that, traffic accidents, body in a caravan in Cairns after 10 days in the middle of summer, 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 an open... vet clinic where I can take to it and someone's just gone, yeah, Dr. Ruger. And I didn't click. Ruger is a brand of firearm. Do you know what I mean? And all those sorts of things 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. 01:01:17 Speaker 1: And then all these years later. 01:01:18 Speaker 3: 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 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 ten, 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 SIDS death. or they went to whatever two months ago, six months ago, 12 months ago,

and that stupid comment has just everything's built up and they've just 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. 01:02:23 Speaker 1: Now that you have these realizations, now that you've been to therapy, is it a weight off your shoulders being able to understand what happened and why you feel like this? 01:02:34 Speaker 3: Definitely. And I've got a lot of penance, not penance maybe isn't the right word, but 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 I have to apologise to and make amends to, not in a seven steps type way, but in a way that, you know, I've probably said and done things that I shouldn't have, that I thought were justified when you look back now, weren't. And I guess part of me coming on podcasts like this, part of me writing the book and getting the book out there was to sort of get that story out and then use that. I am making a documentary on PTSD and policing and that's the next big project that I've got after this book is showing that to police that if you get angry or irritable about something, that's probably the first thing 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 we then criticise them in a split second when something goes wrong and we expect them to be all happy, shiny people whenever we criticise them or say something and life doesn't work that way 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. 01:04:28 Speaker 2: No. 01:04:29 Speaker 1: I know that there is more psychological support available to police officers now, but do you think there's enough? 01:04:35 Speaker 2: No, no. 01:04:37 Speaker 3: 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. And we have such that if you've got a psychological injury, then. 01:05:03 Speaker 3: The biggest thing is to get rid of you because then it comes down to a financial or pecuniary issue. 01:05:11 Speaker 1: It's still considered taboo, isn't it? 01:05:12 Speaker 3: It is. Yeah. 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? Hmm. Whereas it should just be how much help can we get out of it? 01:05:38 Speaker 1: I can see that the times are changing. It's just that they're not changing fast enough. 01:05:45 Speaker 3: No, they're not. And, you know, it's funny. So I worked in international development, which is the aid programs overseas. 01:05:56 Speaker 2: And.... 01:05:58 Speaker 3: I was working on the justice program in Papua New Guinea and one of the things around that we were working on was violence against women and family violence. And the research was that it was going to take over 100 years for the way men treat women and family violence to change through education. 01:06:23 Speaker 1: I have heard that statistic. It's very depressing. 01:06:25 Speaker 3: Yeah. It is very depressing. But if it takes 100 years there, you're looking at a good 50 years before things change here. And considering we've only just started down 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. Yeah. 01:06:50 Speaker 1: 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? 01:06:58 Speaker 3: Driving fast with lights and sirens. And you know what? That is such a thrill. And I also miss the fact that 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 previously. Now, 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. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. And because I see a psychologist all the time, I wouldn't get back in because I have pre-existing conditions, 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. Okay. 01:08:10 Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, Jason, and for, one, taking us into your underworld, undercover life, but also raising the awareness that we need to be speaking about more when it comes to PTSD and police. 01:08:25 Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 01:08:29 Speaker 1: 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.