Life as an Undercover Cop

**Meshel Laurie** (0:03)
This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. For years, Australian police officer Jason Somerville lived undercover as Michael Bates, infiltrating criminal networks while building cases against the people he was investigating. Jason joins us to discuss the realities and psychological toll of undercover policing as explored in his new memoir, Undercurrent. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. A warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
You were in Queensland Police.

**Jason Somerville** (0:45)
Yes, that's correct.

**Meshel Laurie** (0:46)
Then you moved into undercover work. First, I need to ask, I realized driving in today, I thought, now there's something I really want to know.
Is there a course? Does Queensland Police bung on a course?

**Jason Somerville** (1:00)
They do. I think most police services or forces, whatever they're called now, do.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:05)
They'd have to, surely. Because again, in the movies and that, they just chuck you in, you grow a goatee and away you go.
But then I thought, no, surely not. There would be a lot of techniques, a lot of technical stuff, a lot of trying to help you keep your head together. This is what to expect. I would think there would be lessons on how to act like a drug dealer. If you didn't know.

**Jason Somerville** (1:28)
How to count money.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:30)
What does that mean? How to count money?

**Jason Somerville** (1:31)
Well, how many people have $5,000 worth of $50 notes and know how to count it properly? One, two, that's not really how they do it. You have to try and do it fast and that sort of stuff. Identifying real diamonds versus not real diamonds. I didn't know a lot about hard drugs, so just understanding what a packet was.
$100 packet, I had no idea previously, but it's quite funny because the course we did, it's a four-week course, we were in our plain clothes, not nice plain clothes, we could wear jeans and stuff. But it was a course being taught to people about how not to be police officers or pretend not to be police officers, being held at the police academy, obviously.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:18)
Yes, and four weeks doesn't seem enough either.

**Jason Somerville** (2:22)
There's a lot of learning on the job.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:24)
Yeah, I know, but once you're on the job, you're in danger, surely you're in mortal danger. If you cock up how to count the fifties out there on the job, that's a big deal, right?

**Jason Somerville** (2:32)
Well, you might get robbed.
I don't know if that's life-threatening, but I think there's enough training that they work out whether you've got your shit together or not, pardon the French, in regards to whether under pressure, people going to, because we went out drinking and the people come up to you and start talking to you about who are you, what are you doing out here, who are all these people, that sort of stuff. The whole object was it was to try and get to see if you just gave information across or if you, and we were told, don't tell anyone who you are or what you're doing, but once you've had a bit of drink in you and a pretty girl comes up and starts talking to you, some people are known to big note themselves.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:15)
Yes, don't tell anyone, but I'm actually an undercover copper.

**Jason Somerville** (3:18)
Yeah, that's right. Part of it was getting a feel for who's going to survive in those sorts of situations and not drop their bundle and who isn't.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:30)
Because it is in our world, I think we perceive it as glamorous, as really, really cool. Like it's just you and Johnny Depp out there, man. It's really a flashy kind of policing, it seems to us.
I'm sure it doesn't feel that way.

**Jason Somerville** (3:45)
It does. Well, look, it does. You feel like you're doing something special.
Whether you feel like Johnny Depp or not, it's a different story. I never saw it as dangerous because I figure sitting in a police car that's marked, wearing a uniform that says who you are, where you can't see what you're driving through, what's coming or anything like that, is far more dangerous than pretending to be a police officer with a bunch of people who don't really think you're a police officer.

**Meshel Laurie** (4:18)
Yeah. And I suppose there would be very different kinds of missions, if I could call them that, for you to go on. Cause I'm just thinking about the, like, let's just say Mr. Big Stings that we've heard about, you know, where Daniel Malkham's murderer, for example, was charged as a result of that sting. So that's a whole operation of undercover police pretending to be gangsters, to get this offender's trust and get him to confess to a crime.