Shortcut: 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. And 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)
And then you moved into undercover work. And first I need to ask, I realised driving in today, I thought, oh, now there's something I really want to know. Is there a course? Does Queensland Police bung on a course? They do. They'd have to, surely. Because again, in the movies and that, they just kind of 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** (1:24)
How to count money.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:25)
What does that mean? How to count money?

**Jason Somerville** (1:27)
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 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, you're going to, you know, 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 and that sort of stuff. And 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, you know, don't tell anyone who you are or what you're doing. Once you've had a bit of drink in you and a pretty girl comes up and starts talking to you, you know, some people are known to big note themselves.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:23)
Yes, don't tell anyone, but I'm actually an undercover copper.

**Jason Somerville** (2:27)
Yeah, that's right. There are lots of different types of operations. There are one-offs, there are long-term, there are short-term. The first job I ever did was a cell job in regards to a double murderer. And my role was to go in and try and get him to confess to killing two people.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:44)
Oh, so like to be a cellmate or something?

**Jason Somerville** (2:47)
Yeah.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:47)
Yes, right.

**Jason Somerville** (2:49)
I'd literally the day before come out of a cast. So I broke my ankle and I'd literally come out of a cast. So I'm hobbling into this cell.
What they forgot to tell me was that he was like a third Dan Blackbelt in some martial art. I knew he killed two people, but to what extent? And he was a fit looking dude. And he just said, yeah, I killed someone and someone else.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:14)
And is that all you need? I mean, and then in next minute, he sees you pop up in court and say, yeah, I was in the cell with him.

**Jason Somerville** (3:21)
Yeah, that was interesting because he did a few of these things and-

**Meshel Laurie** (3:25)
A few throat slicing gestures in court. How do you meld back into society? Like it's a small world, I guess is what I'm trying to say. You know, we forever hearing people, you're not going to believe who I ran into. I feel like, how do you live in the same community where people know you? They know Jason and we should say that your alter ego is a bloke called Michael Bates.
That's the criminal that you portrayed. So yeah, I feel like it's so easy for someone to walk into KFC and go, oh, that's Michael Bates. Don't they tell their associates to go and get you?

**Jason Somerville** (4:05)
Well, if they did, they weren't real good at it because they didn't get me. But bikeys, maybe yes. I know a few of the people I worked with who are still, they don't have social media accounts, they don't have any of that stuff because of their concern. I don't think I stirred that hornet's nest too much when it came to the bikeys, because the majority of stuff I did was heroin, which is Asian gangs and that sort of thing.