A Former Undercover Cop's Journey to Change

Ever wondered what it's like to walk the precarious line between law enforcement and the shadows of secrecy? Join me, Jason Somerville, as I unmask my true identity in the final episode of "Whisper in the Shadows." As a former undercover cop with the Queensland Police Service from 1991 to 2003, I'll share my journey from covert operations to the candid storytelling that birthed this podcast. By recounting my personal struggles and triumphs, I aim to shed light on the psychological toll policing can take, while also offering a glimpse into the future of our podcast, which will evolve into "Behind the Thin Blue Line" to address broader issues within the law enforcement community.

Curious about life beyond the badge? Discover how I transitioned from police work to an entirely new career path, exploring roles as a travel agent, tour guide, and eventually finding success in recruitment. Imagine leading tours through China, Mongolia, Russia, and South America, utilizing skills honed during years of undercover work. This episode highlights the adaptability of policing skills and serves as a beacon of hope for officers seeking new horizons. Your stories matter too, and I encourage listeners to share their experiences and join the conversation at whisperintheshadowspodcast@gmail.com. Together, let's break the silence and support each other in finding fulfillment beyond the uniform.

Chapters

• 0:00 Whisper in the Shadows
• 12:28 Transitioning Careers Outside of Policing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to my podcast Whisper in the Shadows the true story of a real-life undercover cop. I'm Michael Bates and I was a police officer for 15 years in one of the country's state police forces. I was also an undercover cop for over two years and all the episodes of this podcast are my true stories of what it's really like to be an undercover cop. Rather, I was Michael Bates. Okay, okay, stop, stop, stop there. For the last 20 episodes, you have been listening to this introduction about how Michael Bates isn't my real name but was in fact, the name I used when I worked as an undercover police officer. And if you didn't know that, did you even listen to my podcast Whisper in the Shadows the true story of a real life undercover cop? Anyway, if you are listening to this episode, the very last one of this series then I'm assuming you have been. So Michael Bates is not my real name. However, I will reveal my real identity. My name is actually Jason Somerville and between 1991 and 2003, I was a police officer in the Queensland Police Service. Yes, that's right. All of these undercover jobs were done in the state of Queensland. I was a member of the covert unit between 1995 and 1997, and this is when these jobs took place. Now obviously, names have been changed for both informants and targets, but Michael Bates was a real identity. The details of these stories are, to the best of my recollection, true and did actually happen the way I have described them. I will let you see if you can work out where the operations took place now. You know they were in Queensland. During my time in the police I worked in Cairns, working as far north as Bamaga, which is the pointy bit of Queensland to Logan where I was working when the first drug buy came about, the pointy bit of Queensland to Logan where I was working when the first drug buy came about. After the covert squad I went to work in the Brisbane City Station. Then I was promoted to a senior constable in Mount Isa, working in places like Bedourie and Birdsville, and my last posting was back in Logan before I eventually pulled stumps.

Speaker 1: 2:00

When I first thought about doing this, I had concerns about being tracked down by people I had dealt with if they knew my real name. Hence the use of my Michael Bates persona. But as I went through my time I came to the conclusion that most of the people I had dealt with would be either dead in prison or not able to walk, let alone hunt me down. And besides, I'm pretty sure criminals don't listen to true crime podcasts. So why am I telling you all and shattering the illusion? Because it's the illusion that needs to be shattered. It is the silence and secrecy of not talking about what happens to you as a police officer that needs to be shattered. I want to bring out into the open the effect policing has on the women and men who decide to pursue the calling of policing A very noble calling, right. Well, to be honest, that's not how this all started.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Many years ago, after leaving the police, I was traveling, and one of the group was a very creative person. I told the group some of the stories that I have relayed in this podcast, as well as some of the other antics I got up to as a copper during many nights of drinking on this travel. That's many nights of drinking on the travel. I told stories. Not many nights of drinking on this travel. That's many nights of drinking on the travel. I told stories. Not many nights drinking as a copper.

Speaker 1: 3:09

Anyway, this person suggested I write a book about my time undercover, as it seemed like an interesting longer story, so I started one. Now, this was before smartphones, youtube and Spotify. Time went by and the writing part became less frequent. One day back here in Australia, I had an epiphany why not turn it into a movie script? Now, this was about the time that the TV show Stingers had just come out. Anyway, I had been a bit of a thespian in my day, especially at school, but also during my time in the police. I was part of a couple of theatre and musical groups, so I pivoted and started writing a screenplay. I think in the book I got to about one chapter being written, the screenplay probably the first act, which was joining the police story how I became a UC story.

Speaker 1: 3:56

And then life took over and when I finally got back to the idea, a lot had changed. The desire to put it down on paper, so to speak, was more about getting it out in the open and making it real. Now, what do I mean by that? Because of course, it is real. I did it, I lived and breathed it, I think. I mean I wanted to acknowledge it and explore if it had affected me, or rather how it had affected me. By getting it out, I had a record where I could look back and maybe pinpoint specific times that had contributed to how and why I reacted in later life after the police. Now that doesn't mean that only undercover work affected me. Policing in general affected me. Policing in general affects everyone who does it, whether they admit it or not. That was part of the reason for the podcast as well to let people hear that they aren't the only ones who did things that affected them. That is how the podcast evolved into the Behind the Thin Blue Line, but I'll come to that later.

Speaker 1: 4:55

So a book was out, a movie was out and I thought to myself how do people consume stories or information? Now I know podcasts and with that revelation the Whisper in the Shadows podcast was born. Well, the idea was anyway. I had no idea how to make a podcast, but there was a hell of a lot of people doing them, so surely it couldn't be that hard, could it? I mean, I had a good story to tell. Well, the stories I told at parties, people loved, so I thought I'd just record them and off I go. Yeah right, I ended up doing a lot of research and nearly researched myself out of the idea, but I needed to get this out of me to acknowledge I had done it. So I bought a podcasting kit with a microphone, a stand and a small mixer, tried out some podcasting apps and off I went.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Now, the first attempt at an episode was abysmal I just rambled and the quality was crap. So I had to think about me as a person and how was I going to do this. I realized that I'd need to script it. Now, by that I don't mean making it up, but I actually wrote it out episode by episode by by by, to make sure that, one, I didn't miss anything and two, the episodes were consistent in length and also moving through the story, not around it. Before I started writing, I thought to myself I'll get maybe 10 episodes and hopefully have 100 people listen to it. I didn't have a goal around that, I just wanted it out. I had a whiteboard where all of the ops and key players were written down To me. That was going to be about eight episodes. I thought, if I do an extra couple on how I joined, and then the informants, then there was my 10. By the time I'd finished writing about how I became a UC, my first job, and the informants, I think I had about eight episodes alone. I definitely needed to do more planning.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Okay, so a quick plug here, for which I am not getting paid, but I use Budsprout to host and distribute my podcasts and I use Podcastle to record them. Now, I've tried lots of different software and apps and these two work for me. Castle to record them. Now, I've tried lots of different software and apps and these two work for me. Now, both I have to pay for to use, as neither of the podcasts were designed to make money. That's a cost I'm prepared to bear. That said, however, I do have a link on each episode where you can buy me a beer. So, unabashed plug if you do like what you've heard on any of the episodes, please follow the link and donate some money to buy me a beer. I can tell you will be greatly appreciated. Okay, so this podcast has now ended up being 21 episodes, which is absolutely blow my mind. As of today, there are over 6,000 downloads. Again blows my mind. All I need now is for a TV series producer to listen to it and think it will make a great limited series. Are you listening? Netflix or Stan? Okay, all joking aside, it has now morphed into something else.

Speaker 1: 7:53

I decided to try and interview ex-COVID police to see how their lives were affected by doing UC work. I've called this series Behind the Thin Blue Line, and hopefully you've listened to the first three episodes or watched them on YouTube. One particular conversation with Keith Banks, which is episode two, really struck a chord with me. About PTSD, I had been showing classic signs and putting it down to other things. This conversation switched the light bulb on, and now I'm starting to address it. I don't think that would have happened without having the conversation with Keith. That then gave me new purpose to pivot the podcast to interview cops in general, both former and current, about how policing has affected their lives and how they cope with the stress of it. To that end, I have two new episodes ready to go in July.

Speaker 1: 8:41

During the course of setting this up, though, I've seen that there are a lot of coppers who want to get out of the job but just don't know how, or they don't know how to use their skills to find other work. Now, I guess I was lucky when I left the police in 2003, but, like everything with me, it wasn't conventional. So I have told the story of sitting up late at night and seeing the advert for the police adjoining because it felt like the right thing to do. That was 1990, and through it I became one of the new breed the first 400 after the Fitzgerald inquiry, in actual fact, and most of the 400 who actually got sworn in on the 12th of December 1991, were actually Muppets most useless police personnel ever trained. I knew what the slippery slope of corruption was. I knew how to be as soft and cuddly to someone who had a knife or a gun pointed at me to try and talk them out of it. But I had no idea about how to really police. Nor was I prepared for the cold, hard reality that no one liked you simply because of the job you did and there was literally no support.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Fast forward to 2002. I was burnt out. I was working in Logan for the second time in my career. Now Logan is a shithole. If you aren't arresting people, you are chasing them or you are getting abused for doing your job. I was getting reg 11s for the most minor things and I'd had enough of the bullshit the policing had become Now. I wasn't the best copper, but I certainly wasn't the worst. I genuinely wanted to help people and stop crime.

Speaker 1: 10:20

I was sitting at home one Sunday morning and reading the Sunday Mail which back then newspapers were still the way you got your news Flight Centre had taken out a double-page advert with the words Do you like to travel? Now I had caught the travel bug in 1999 when I went overseas for the first time and done about four or five trips since then. So the answer was resounding yes, I love to travel. And that's when it happened. Another of these feels like the right thing to do moment I got up, applied for the job and three weeks later I was offered the role. I got up, applied for the job and three weeks later I was offered the role.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Now, the process to get that job was really strange. I had a group interview where I had to sell a pineapple. I was obviously very good at it because I got the job. Anyway, I immediately took leave and then decided I would burn my long service leave on half pay After all, travel did not pay well and I didn't know if I was going to last at doing it. So I finished up at Logan on the Sunday before I was due to go on long service leave of six plus months.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Now everyone I knew was going. Everyone knew I was going to go and work and travel to see if I could make a new career out of it. Anyway, it was October 13, 2002. Now that date is significant. Well, actually the date, the date of October 12 is significant. So I walk into the data room at about 9.30am for a 10am shift start. The TV is on and I was vaguely looking at it, not really watching what was going on. Then one of the guys said to me you picked a great time to go into travel, nodding towards the TV. You see, october 12, 2002, there was a great time to go into travel, nodding towards the TV. You see, october 12, 2002, there was a series of bombings in Bali and I was leaving policing to go into an industry where the most popular destination at the time was Bali. It was too late to back out as I was starting the following morning. Despite this, I became a travel agent. At the end of my long service leave, I filed my papers to leave the job. There was no exit interview. No, do you need any psychological help or are you okay, etc. Etc. It was simply hand your badge back and See ya Now.

Speaker 1: 12:28

I worked as a travel agent for about 18 months and then moved into being a tour guide in China, mongolia and Russia. To be fair, when I applied to be a tour guide I wanted to do it in Thailand. I had just done a trip there with the company I was to join and in a group of 12, there was myself and 11 girls aged between 18 and 22, which was standard age group for the Thailand tours I mean, really, for a single guy who wouldn't want to run those tours. But I was offered China, where the average age of the tour group was 55. But I did get to go to Russia, something I had always wanted to do, which was a plus. I came home after two years of earning $50 a day when you were on tour and nothing when you weren't.

Speaker 1: 13:14

I got a job in adventure travel as a travel agent again and a chance meeting with someone I had met on a tour I had taken as a passenger in South America. I received an email out of the blue from the old tour leader of that tour. After about a week of emails I was on a plane to Lima in Peru to be a tour guide in South America. Now I did this for about three or four months but to be honest, there was too much cocaine being done by just about everyone, which went against my values and also my then-fiancee said I needed to go back to Australia and get a real job if I wanted to get married. In hindsight I probably should have stayed. So I left and wound up back as a travel agent again. That lasted for about 80 months before I became an airline rep, selling fares for airlines like Land, airlangus and Continental to travel agents.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Now that didn't last long because apparently I didn't meet my targets, even though I was never told what my targets were and when I did ask was told I didn't need to worry about them. Clearly I did need to worry, but that job loss proved to be my move out of travel. At the time I had a friend who was working in recruitment. He was earning 60k a year. Traveler had been paying me about 40k a year. In policing I'd been on about 65k at the end.

Speaker 1: 14:30

So I saw an advert for a recruitment consultant, applied and got an interview. One of the questions they asked me was why I wanted to become a recruiter. Of course, still being in that altruistic mode of policing, I said I wanted to help people get a job. I had five interviews all up with this company and at the last one, I was asked why I wanted to be a recruiter. My answer was I want to make lots of money. I got the job because that was what being in a recruitment agency was all about making money by putting people into jobs. Despite the fact that the manager and owner thought I wouldn't make it, I became their rain man and was one of the biggest builders in the company.

Speaker 1: 15:10

I have been in the recruitment industry in some shape or form since 2008. I've worked both in an agency, making lots of money, and internally, where the focus is on bettering the business. It is a career I wouldn't have had without policing. The same can be said for tour leading I wouldn't have done that without policing either. Okay, so why am I telling you all of this? I hear you say Is it because I like talking about myself and telling people how lucky I am and how good I am at not being a police officer? Look, the answer to that is probably yes, but it is also about the fact that you can have another career outside of the police if you really want to.

Speaker 1: 15:50

I constantly see on social media questions from police about how they get out of policing and do something else. Most, if not all, look at government jobs or prisons or private security, because they think that is all policing has given them the skills to do. This is incorrect. I mean, your policing experience could make you into a pretty good crook too. Anyway, in all seriousness, there is a whole world of things to do outside of policing that your skills enable you to do. All you have to do is understand what those skills are.

Speaker 1: 16:24

For instance, in recruitment, I have to interview people. Depending on whether I'm in an agency, it is both clients ie finding out what they really need as opposed to what they want in a candidate to do their job as well as candidates finding out if they can really do the job they are applying for, because not unlike some victims and most crooks, no one tells the truth the first time around. The interviewing skills I learned as a police officer have set me up extraordinarily well to recruit. I mean, I'm not allowed to use a phone book in interviews anymore, but I can still pick when something just doesn't sound or feel right. Same thing with being a tour leader All of the skills around managing situations or incidents, the organisational parts of policing, the planning part of raids and things like that all helped when I was responsible for getting a group of people across a foreign country on public transport without losing any of them. Now, unfortunately, I did lose some on a trip in Russia, but that isn't the point. The point is the skills I had as a police officer were spot on for getting that job.

Speaker 1: 17:30

Why am I telling you this? As a police officer was spot on for getting that job. Why am I telling you this? Well, as part of the Thin Blue Line podcast, I want to have conversations with current and former police about how the job has affected them, but also about how they went about leaving and finding a new job. Let that advice out into the big bad world and hopefully help current and former police deal with PTSD, or at least understand why they behave in certain ways now and then, and give them hope that there is a life outside of policing, sometimes a very lucrative one. So if you are listening to this and you would like to have a conversation with me about either your time as a police officer, to tell your stories, discuss how PTSD has affected you or your mental health, or how you managed to find a new career, hit me up on whisperintheshadowspodcast at gmailcom. Let's start a conversation that will hopefully help more police live happier and healthier lives. Okay, so that's the end of the line for this current podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:28

I hope you've enjoyed listening to my time undercover. I have genuinely enjoyed telling the story. If you or anyone you know is experiencing issues with mental health, then please reach out to someone like Lifeline and get help. Thank you for listening and please join me for the next installment of Behind the Thin Blue Line a conversation with police. Thank you for listening to Whisper in the Shadows the true story of a real-life undercover police officer. I hope you've enjoyed the series. That has been the final episode in this series of my podcast.

Speaker 1: 19:01

The Behind the Thin Blue Line podcast will now continue, where I'll be having conversations with both former and current police officers. In these conversations, I want to give a voice to all those living amongst us, unseen and unnoticed, who have put their life on the line being a police officer. I want to let them tell their real-life stories. Behind the Thin Blue Line is just that an opportunity for current and former police to tell their stories, good and bad, to give you, the listener, a glimpse into something that you will never likely get to experience. Please make sure you subscribe to the new podcast so you never miss an episode. Lastly, if you're a current or former police officer, I would love to chat to you about your experiences. Or if you're feeling dangerous to tell your stories on my podcast, please get in contact by email, which is whisperintheshadowspodcast at gmailcom. Thank you, and I look forward to catching you on Behind the Thin Blue Line.