Drugs, Guns and Lies

By: Ben Smith, Keith Banks

Narrated by: Joel Jackson

A story from the inside when Queensland had the most corrupt police force in the country. This is what it's really like to be an undercover police officer.

'Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.'

This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland's most decorated police officers, and his journey into the drug scene as an undercover operative in the 1980s. In an era of corruption, often alone, with no backup, he and other undercover cops quickly learned to blend into the drug scene, smoking dope and drinking with targets, buying drugs and having dealers arrested. Very quickly, the lines were blurred between his identity as a police officer and the life he pretended to be part of. This is a raw and confronting story of undercover cops who all became casualties of that era, some worse than others, and where not everyone with a badge could be trusted.

©2020 Keith Banks and Ben Smith (P)2020 Allen & Unwin Pty Limited