I had never smoked cigarettes or consumed alcohol and had never used drugs. But within three months of working as an undercover cop, I became a binge drinker and smoked as much marijuana as the people I was dealing with.
I joined the police force as an idealistic 17-year-old wanting to change the world.
Four years later I volunteered to work undercover and had no idea how much the world would change me, instead.
In that wonderful flush of idealistic youth, I’d wanted to do everything I could to help fight the drug trade, particularly the waves of heroin that were flooding into the country in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Working as an undercover agent seemed to be a significant way to do something worthwhile.
The world of an undercover cop was not controlled by rostered shifts; we lived our other identities every waking hour.
I carried a gun whenever I left my unit, was hyper vigilant and had no friends outside the tight knit circle of other undercover agents, which only numbered five or six at any one time. All of us were still kids, with no one over the age of 24.
Kieth's ID photo taken in 1977. Source: Supplied
I’d spent the previous four years in a strict paramilitary structure as a uniformed police officer, with an emphasis on discipline, following the rules, doing what I was told and making sure my uniform was pristine.
Now I was dressing how I wanted, growing my hair and beard, wearing an earring, and spending every waking hour removing all traces of any police habits or attitudes that had been ingrained in me from the first day at the Academy.
I removed myself from my social circle including a Tae Kwon Do school I’d been training at around five times per week.
One of the toughest things to do was to lie to my non-police friends and, as part of the ruse, tell them I’d been fired from the police for drug use.
I could see they looked at me differently, but part of undercover is to live the life you portray, and I couldn’t tell any of them the truth.
For the next two years, I almost always worked alone and spent my days buying drugs, working on moving up the distribution chain to the major dealers and having them arrested.
I lied to everyone I met and used different names depending on circumstances. Lying became a habit and telling the truth was challenging.
I’d always been somewhat shy but working undercover changed that dramatically. I developed the ability to lie easily and maintain those lies under pressure situations. I still do.
It was a lonely life. Long before mobile phones, I rang the drug squad office from a public phone booth around once per week. The rest of the time, my whereabouts were unknown and, unlike the movies, I had no backup.
All of us were in the same situation, we worked alone and relied on ourselves to make sure we were safe.
The personal cost was that a normal relationship was impossible to have. I lied to everyone I met and used different names depending on circumstances. Lying became a habit and telling the truth was challenging.
It’s a world that is impossible to understand unless you’ve been there. It was dangerous work, but the emotional toll was worse. To befriend others with the intention of betraying them is unnatural; even though those I befriended and betrayed were criminals.
I met drug dealers who I quite enjoyed hanging around with, funny and engaging people, but criminals, nonetheless. That made the betrayal even harder.
The real problem was that once I’d experienced the rush of masquerading as a criminal and drug dealer, it became an addictive lifestyle. The combination of fear and exhilaration is almost impossible to replicate in the normal world. As lonely and dangerous as it was, that life had an attraction that for many of my colleagues was difficult to divorce themselves from.
All of us ended up damaged in some way; some with a psychological addiction to marijuana, others with alcohol dependence and others with paranoia and distrust of almost everyone.
Keith pictured in 1982. Source: Supplied
But all of us quickly developed a jaded view of the world and its inhabitants, and a cynicism well beyond our years.
I was lucky; the only real impact on me was a massive change of attitude. By the time I resurfaced from deep undercover, I’d developed a view of the world that was no longer black and white but shades of grey.
That life helped me relate to offenders in a different way and changed my attitudes about the drug world. My mindset was now that not everyone who used drugs was a criminal or scum, like so many police thought.
The unintended consequence was that working undercover had also given me a dislike for rules, regulations and stupid decisions. From wanting to be a cop for life I was now questioning everything that I had been institutionalised to believe, and my changed attitude marked me for the rest of my career.
I was no longer Keith Banks, naïve kid from the country who did what he was told. I was Keith Banks, ex-undercover cop, and life was never the same.
I resigned from the police force after 20 years to move into a corporate role, and the only thing I miss is the camaraderie. I will never find that again.
