Sei sulla pagina 1di 21

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.

indd 3 9/4/20 3:35 pm


Certain names and details have been changed to protect the innocent
and guilty alike.

First published in 2020

Copyright © Keith Banks and Ben Smith 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in


any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book,
whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for
its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body
that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency
(Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin


83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com

A catalogue record for this


book is available from the
National Library of Australia

ISBN 978 1 76087 795 8

Set in 12/16.7 pt Minion Pro by Midland Typesetters, Australia


Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, part of Ovato

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

The paper in this book is FSC® certified.


FSC® promotes environmentally responsible,
socially beneficial and economically viable
C009448
management of the world’s forests.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 4 9/4/20 3:35 pm


For Larry Philip McGregor, my brother by choice.
Rest easy mate; now you know the secret.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 5 9/4/20 3:35 pm


I sometimes wondered whether our real lives were our actual cover:
acting as normal people with the attendant facades that life required.
We spent that time waiting for the next job so we could become
the person who didn’t obey the rules or conventions. That was the
problem: the fear and the rush were too fucking addictive . . .

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 7 9/4/20 3:35 pm


AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is commonly said in police forces around the world that being a


police officer is like having a front row seat to the greatest show on
earth.
I joined the Queensland Police Force in 1975 and resigned from
the Queensland Police Service in 1995. The change of name from
Force to Service speaks volumes. In that time, I worked with and met
some of the finest people I have ever known. The overwhelming majority
of police were honest, hardworking and dedicated. It is important for
me to say this from the beginning. However, I was also exposed to the
corrupt activities of some police who used their position for their own
gain and without regard to the damage their actions caused to a noble
profession.
I have written this book from my perspective of those days, and
I am well aware that not everyone will share my view of that era. Most
people prefer to remember good times, not bad. Sadly, many of us
experienced the bad and were changed irrevocably as a result.
Undercover work is a world that is not well understood by many,
including police. To befriend others and to then betray them is chal-
lenging and most undercovers I have spoken with have found this to
be the most damaging part of the Job. Add to this the fact that we were
young; most of us were under twenty-four years of age.
However, once we experienced the rush of masquerading as crim-
inals and drug dealers, it became an addictive lifestyle. It is said that

ix

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 9 9/4/20 3:35 pm


x DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

many police are isolationist, and this is often true. The nature of the
Job means police see and experience things that normal people do not.
Undercovers experience things that other police do not. This is not
meant as bravado, but as fact.
I have mentioned the Fitzgerald Inquiry in some places in this
book. For perspective, it is beneficial to provide an overview of that
inquiry.
In May 1987, after a media report of possible police corrup-
tion involving prostitution and illegal gambling, Acting Queensland
Premier Bill Gunn ordered a commission of inquiry. Tony Fitzgerald
QC was appointed to lead the ‘Commission of Inquiry into Possible
Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct’, known as the
Fitzgerald Inquiry.
The Inquiry was expected to last about six weeks, but instead
spent almost two years conducting a comprehensive investigation of
police and political corruption in Queensland. It changed the face
of policing and the political landscape in Queensland forever. I am not
going to comment on the prosecutions arising from the Inquiry, but
there were many unintended consequences for honest and dedicated
police.
After the Inquiry, new recruits at the Academy were told that anyone
above the rank of Senior Constable could not be trusted as they were
either corrupt or accepted a culture of corruption. Some police who had
little operational experience were promoted to positions they were not
equipped for. Some honest police were adversely named by offenders
they had arrested as a payback. Even when these allegations were proven
not to be correct, once they had been named, their careers were ruined.
During their service, many active and operational police were
subject of complaints against them by offenders, a common tactic
to delay court proceedings. In the brave new world of policing after
Fitzgerald, this meant that police who had complaints on their records
were often overlooked for promotion.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 10 9/4/20 3:35 pm


AUTHOR’S NOTE xi

I am not for a moment suggesting the Inquiry should not have


happened, but I saw the aftermath adversely affect the way police
operated. It seemed to me that some sections of the Service were more
concerned in creating a corporate hologram than focusing on protect-
ing decent people from the predators and criminals.
I still bleed blue, as the saying goes. I have nothing but absolute
respect for police and the Job. This is not a happy story, but one that
needs to be told. The days I have written of no longer exist, thankfully,
and policing is now not only more professional, but definitely more
challenging than it was.
My hope is that this book may go a little way to helping readers
look at police officers and the work they do through a different lens.
They don’t just write traffic tickets.
To all my brothers and sisters in blue, thank you for your service
and your friendship over the journey. I am sorry your contributions to
the safety of Queensland were tarnished by the actions of the few who
didn’t deserve to carry the badge. You will always be part of me and
my life.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 11 9/4/20 3:35 pm


PROLOGUE: THIRTY YEARS DOWN THE TRACK

By 1993, Harry Shehab was on the run.


He left Brisbane one summer’s night, headed south along the coast
with nothing more than his Harley-Davidson and a few thousand
dollars stuffed in his saddlebag. Once a straight young cop, he now
looked more like one of Queensland’s many bikies with hair around
his shoulders and a scraggly beard. The last thing he wanted was to be
pulled up by police—or worse, recognised by them—but running was
Harry’s only choice.
The last time I’d seen Harry, the real Harry, was a decade earlier,
in late 1982. He had just finished an operation and I met him in the
Brisbane CBD for a beer. Harry had always been a devout Muslim,
and him drinking was the first in a series of drastic changes. I didn’t
think anything of it at the time—it was 1980s Queensland, and
practic­ally every cop in the Job drank. He was the same guy he’d
always been: smart, idealistic, honest. He was about to leave for a
job in Cairns, so we didn’t see each other for a while. And up there
he changed.
A decade later, riding through the dark in mid-­­summer, Harry’s
blood was full of heroin. It had been there almost every day since
he returned from Cairns, and the cash in his bag came from banks
around Brisbane. Over the next week Harry rode his motorbike
down the Queensland coast, through New South Wales and on
to Adelaide.

xiii

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 13 9/4/20 3:35 pm


xiv DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

Ten years earlier he’d never had a drink in his life. In 1982 he’d been
a constable in the Queensland Police Force, working deep undercover
operations targeting drug rings.
In Cairns, Harry was forced to use heroin to maintain his cover.
No doubt someone was suspicious of him, and maybe he thought he
could just take heroin once. Lots of people do.
We were all damaged then, but none of us knew it. Our police work
affected us like sediment building up, an accumulation: dead bodies,
car smashes, rape victims, the sound of people dying and the sound of
people trying not to die. When the heroin hit his brain it made all those
things seem very far away.
After Cairns, Harry did a couple more operations and then
returned to uniform. I guess he was the only uniformed police officer
in Queensland with a heroin addiction, although he hid it well, and he
held out until 1992 before the drugs and their effects became too much
to handle. The Job unofficially recognised its culpability and paid him
out, medically unfit. No therapy, no rehabilitation, no responsibility.
The money soon disappeared and all Harry had left was his bike and
his habit.
Harry got it the worst, but nobody came out unscathed. We started
off as kids and became hardened undercover operators. Some of us
became tactical response specialists, some of us became detectives.
We’d kicked in doors, been shot at, infiltrated heroin importation rings
and mafia circles. The Job taught us how to be effective narcs, but not
what to do afterwards. It didn’t know what to do, and neither did we.
We could buy drugs, fool dealers, and we could drink enough to wash
it all away. So that’s what we did.
It would be decades before anyone saw Harry again.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 14 9/4/20 3:35 pm


Prologue: Thirty years down the track xv

Most of Australia has heard the stories about Police Commissioner


Terry Lewis. History shows that along with Jack Herbert, Tony
Murphy and Glen Patrick Hallahan, he helped run the most noto-
rious corruption ring revealed in Australian policing. You can read
about how Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley was home to gambling dens
and brothels, and the involvement of Gerry Bellino, Vic Conte and
Hector Hapeta. We know that Herbert was the bagman, and have
read about the graft, the threats, the suspicious deaths. We’ve read
about the sense of doom, the terror in Makerston Street Police
Headquarters, as the Fitzgerald Inquiry gathered steam and people
realised it wasn’t just another National Hotel Inquiry, or another
Williams Royal Commission, but that this one could bring the whole
empire crashing down.
It did exactly that.
The Fitzgerald Inquiry dealt the killing blow to Bjelke-­Petersen’s
eighteen-­year premiership. It gaoled three former ministers, resulted
in two by-­elections, sent Police Commissioner Terry Lewis to gaol and
stripped him of his knighthood.
None of the deaths of this era are less than tragic, and none of the
events uncovered are less than reprehensible, a grand abuse of author-
ity and trust. But they are not everything.
It wasn’t just that the force was corrupt at the top, nor that Premier
Joh Bjelke-­Petersen’s stifling reign lasted almost twenty years, and the
National Party’s government over thirty. It’s that these events and
their repercussions suffused throughout Queensland, spreading from
Coolangatta on the border of New South Wales right up to Cairns. It’s
that such a system of crime and corruption could not be contained
to those directly involved, and that by the nature of its all-­subsuming
growth it drew so many others into its currents.
I’ll be the first to say that I didn’t have much to do with Terry Lewis.
I only met Tony Murphy a couple of times, and if I saw Jack Herbert
hanging around, I don’t remember talking to him. I’m not here to try

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 15 9/4/20 3:35 pm


xvi DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

to tack my name up alongside theirs as part of the drama of the era.


I’m not going to talk about the time Murphy looked into my eyes and
my blood went cold. It happened, but it’s not important. This story isn’t
about hitching a ride on their notoriety.
It is about a culture of secrecy and corruption that undermined the
integral trust and loyalty police depend upon daily. It’s about how some
investigations were halted as a result of corrupt police interests, how
certain criminals knew undercover agents were police, how we endan-
gered ourselves to stem the flow of drugs but unwittingly channelled
them into the hands of senior police to flog straight back to dealers. It’s
about being sent into a heroin ring in far north Queensland with no
surveillance, no training and no background intelligence, alone, only
to find that the whole thing was futile because someone upstairs didn’t
want their fucking business partner pinched.
It’s been over thirty years now. Maybe I need to let it go.
I have a friend who was a police officer for thirty-­three years. He’s
one of the toughest guys I  know, a solid Maori bloke who worked
undercover, tactical response, bikie files. For years he avoided police.
He wouldn’t talk to anyone who’d served. These days, we talk on the
phone several times a week just to help him process the long list of
traumatic things he’d seen. It all happened over thirty years ago.
Another friend never sought help for his PTSD and was caught
offering to lessen charges in exchange for drug money. He’d developed a
habit after smoking so much pot while undercover. He was kicked from
the force, went to gaol, and now lives overseas. As far as I know, he still
reckons people are after him. That all happened about thirty years ago.
Another colleague was with me the day Senior Constable Peter
Kidd was killed in a raid. To this day he and a few others believe the
raid was rushed to divert attention from the Fitzgerald Inquiry, which
had started two days earlier. He’s cut himself off and hasn’t spoken to
anyone for, well, probably thirty years.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 16 9/4/20 3:35 pm


Prologue: Thirty years down the track xvii

This book’s about corruption, but it’s not. It’s about people whose
suffering has been obscured—and instigated—by the intrigue and
scandal of the years we chanced into being police officers. It’s about
kids who joined the force to fight crime only to find themselves in a
world that endorsed it. It’s that the only people who know these stories
are the people they belong to.
It’s been over thirty years now and I still haven’t let it go.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 17 9/4/20 3:35 pm


THEY NEED MEN WITH ETHICS

I was happy for the first six years of my life, when I lived with my mother
and grandparents in the tiny farming town of Tambo, on the banks of
the Barcoo River. If nothing had changed I might be living in Brisbane
now, working as a lawyer or in social services. I would go to work in the
morning, come home at night, and I never would have killed anyone.
My parents divorced before I  was old enough to talk, and my
mother and I moved from New South Wales back to her hometown to
be with her family. She didn’t have many choices. There was no family
law court in the 1960s, no assistance for a mother whose husband
had left.
I have a few memories from that time: fishing with my grandfather
and his sons, all drovers, tough but kind men who showed me how to
treat people well, and how to work hard. I remember my grandmother
preparing meals on a wood stove and seeing her wash clothes in an
old copper kettle. I spent the lazy days playing with other kids in the
paddocks and the patch of dry grass we called a schoolyard.
When I  was six years old, my mother introduced a man to the
family who she had fallen in love with. He seemed friendly and pre-
sented himself well. It’s hard to say how long it was, but some months
later the three of us packed up and left Tambo. I had no idea how much
of an influence this man would have on my life.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 1 9/4/20 3:35 pm


2 DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

We lived in a caravan on the road, then in caravan parks, moving from


place to place wherever there was work. One day they left me with some
neighbours in an adjoining caravan. While they were away, my puppy
ran underneath the caravan and wouldn’t come out. I was crying by the
time they returned, and that was the first day he hit me. They’d gone
off to get married, and I don’t remember why, but after that he changed
almost overnight. That afternoon he grabbed me by the shoulders and
hit me across the back of the head.
That was the beginning.
We kept moving, from Mount Isa in the far west of Queensland,
across to Alice Springs and then back to Queensland at Carpentaria,
in the far north-­west, where I attended the School of the Air through a
two-­way radio at home. It may seem that I saw a lot of the country, but
it never felt like that. Wherever we went, the inside of the caravan was
the same, a tightly wound spring that could snap loose at any moment.
If the scenery outside changed I didn’t notice, because we carried our
family life with us, an enclosed world where I was too scared to speak,
where my mother was too scared to stick up for me, and where there
was nowhere to hide.
We didn’t stay anywhere for more than two months, and in the first
two years I went to twelve different schools.
You might think that school was a respite, but since I could never
settle anywhere I  could never make friends, and the new kids are
always weird. I was small and shy, and didn’t know how to stand up for
myself. Before school or during the first recess, some older kids would
take an interest in me and I’d end up on the ground with bruises on
my ribs.
Twelve different schools, twelve different groups of kids ready to
flog me. I just came to expect it.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 2 9/4/20 3:35 pm


They need men with ethics 3

Mum could see what was happening but couldn’t stop it. She was
power­less. My stepfather, on the other hand, didn’t see me as a victim
but as an encumbrance on his life, a financial drain when money was
already tight. Worse than anything, though, I was a constant reminder
that there had been another man in his partner’s life.
At home I learnt to avoid eye contact and do exactly as I was told.
Even so, one of the few constants in my life was being hit with my step-
father’s belt or across the head.
They’d been married for a couple of years when my mother
decided I needed stability in my schooling. By that time they’d had
a  daughter, which only increased the tension among us. I  know it
broke my mother’s heart, but she decided to drive me back to Tambo
to live with my grandparents again. My stepfather was happy to be
rid of me.
For the first time since he had arrived, I was happy again. Returning
to Tambo ended the moving around, the beltings I  received at new
schools and at home. It was like going back to my old life, where I was
meant to be all along. I missed my mother, but my grandparents had
been there since I  was born, so they were like parents to me. They
understood what I was going through, and expressed this understand-
ing through their efforts to provide good role models, the first I’d had
since leaving Tambo in the first place. I was able to forge friendships
with other children and see that the world was bigger than the inside of
a caravan, and that there were better ways to treat people.
My grandparents owned a shop next to the house, and in those
days the local shop was a central fixture in any country town’s social
life. My cousins lived right across the road, and my uncles stayed with
us when they weren’t out on the stations. I was surrounded by people
who loved and cared for me. One uncle showed me how to play chess,
and another taught me a love of books. Evenings engaged in these
pursuits fulfilled and enriched me, and were as far as I could get from
life in the caravan where books were treated with suspicion.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 3 9/4/20 3:35 pm


4 DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t had those two
years away. The abuse wouldn’t have become any better, and I don’t like
to think about how it might have changed me. Many of the criminals
I met later in life had similar upbringings to my own. Perhaps they’d
been like me, but without any family to guide them.
It was around this time that I became interested in being a police
officer. I was drawn to the idea of standing up for people who couldn’t
help themselves. Through snippets of overheard conversation, though,
I came to understand that Tambo’s police officer wasn’t much of a service
to the community. He spent most of his time at the pub, demand-
ing cheap or free drinks and threatening to arrest patrons for public
drunkenness, although he was the drunkest in the bar. Later, I learnt
that rural police postings were often punishments, doled out to officers
who failed to perform in the city, or irritated the wrong i­nspector,
or were caught for the wrong misdemeanour. Not that all rural police
were inept, but the unfortunate consequence of this system was a trend
of poor policing in the country, and even upstanding country people
like my grandparents came to distrust the police. They only ever saw
the worst of them, and the worst could be pretty bad.

Around two years after dropping me off in Tambo, my mother appeared


again and we moved to Mount Isa, where my stepfather had found shift
work at the mines. I was happy to see my mother and my sister, but my
stepfather hadn’t changed.
His drinking had increased since I’d last seen him. He was more
sullen, more angry with the world. My happiest times came during his
afternoon shifts, a reprieve from his ominous presence.
I saw and heard his alcohol-­fuelled fights with my mother; she
couldn’t do anything to stop them, and it seemed like the smallest
things would set him off. I lived in dread of those nights. While I now

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 4 9/4/20 3:35 pm


They need men with ethics 5

understand the cycle of domestic violence, back then I  didn’t know


what was happening. I thought it was just how things were.
Even at that age, I  understood that my way out was to succeed
academically and adopted an attitude of quiet compliance to cope.
It didn’t stop the beatings, but it minimised them. I made the decision
never to be like him or those around us, the friends he brought over
to drink at our house. I kept my head down, but the air of menace was
still present.

I’m not going to linger on it, because as hard and unfair as it was, it was
the same wherever we went. When you’re a kid, time takes forever to
move on. It feels like you’ll never grow up, that you’ll be a child forever.
At least that’s what it felt like to me. This was my life and it would
never change.
Of course, it did, and when I was eleven years old, my stepfather
bought a taxi licence and we settled in Cairns. Being in one place
meant I  could piece together a normal childhood. For the first time
I  was able to make friends with kids my age, knowing that I  wasn’t
going to disappear. I joined the Scouts, and in Year 8 the Army Cadets,
where I found the guidance of good men who believed in supporting
kids. Looking back, I  was drawn to structured, disciplined environ-
ments with reliable authority figures.
It doesn’t take a psychologist to work that one out.
We moved to Cairns when I  was in Year 6, but left again about
halfway through Year 9 to live in Charters Towers, near Townsville. To
say I hated it there was an understatement. After having lived in Cairns,
I resented the small-­minded attitudes I saw around me, the racism and
homophobia, the lack of ambition. I always knew I had to get out, to go
somewhere else and be somebody else, and living in Charters Towers
brought this into stark focus.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 5 9/4/20 3:35 pm


6 DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

My plan was to become a detective and protect people from those


who would do them harm.

I took up judo when I was fifteen. I didn’t think about it like this then,
but I needed a way to feel confident, and to develop myself as a person.
I was a shy, withdrawn teenager who’d never spoken to a girl unless I
had to, and only had a couple of friends. My stepfather was hostile
about my decision to train in martial arts. I don’t know if it was because
he saw it as a response to his behaviour, or because he was antagonistic
towards people trying to improve themselves.
A few months after I’d started training, we had a bad night at home.
He was pissed, and he hit Mum across the face. Instead of hiding, this
time I told him to stop.
He spun to face me, then grabbed a chair from the table and
wielded it like an axe. ‘If you don’t shut the fuck up,’ he roared, ‘I’ll
break this across your head.’
I don’t know what happened, but suddenly I  had a chair in my
own hands and was yelling back at him. We were nearly eye-­to-­eye.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realised that I was almost as tall as him.
He’d always been this dominating presence in the house, and it wasn’t
until I confronted him that I understood he wouldn’t be bigger than
me forever.
He glared at me, but didn’t strike. Instead he threw the chair down.
I was still holding mine when he staggered off, muttering something
about ungratefulness.
The next morning he acted like nothing had happened, but he
didn’t hit either of us again.

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 6 9/4/20 3:35 pm


They need men with ethics 7

By Year 11 I’d worked my way up to cadet underofficer in the Army


Cadets and was considering my future. I knew I wanted to help people,
and never considered any careers that didn’t directly serve other
people. I knew what it was like being bullied at home and at school,
and I wanted to stop those who hurt others.
The warrant officer in charge of Army Cadets for our region
encouraged me to apply for Duntroon. Entry into the Australian
Army was practically confirmed, given my history with the cadets,
but one day a police officer came to school and spoke about careers in
policing. Under the cadet system you could apply as early as Year 10
and finish the last two years of school there, followed by twelve
months of police training. To enter the Army you had to finish high
school.
From my perspective, those twelve months seemed like an
eternity, and all the worse if there was a way to avoid them. I  made
up my mind and applied for the Police Academy as a cadet. As part of
my application, I needed a reference from the deputy principal at my
school, a brilliant man named Kev Burry. He was also in charge of the
Army Cadets at school, and mentored me as I  progressed through
the ranks. Over the years he and I had formed a bond, and I’m sure
he recognised my less-­than-­desirable home life. He encouraged me to
stay in Charters Towers, that even though the Academy would include
Year  12, it wouldn’t be the same. He told me I  would have a bright
future through Duntroon, which also included a degree.
I said I knew that, but that I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted
to stand up against the predators and bullies, to help people who
couldn’t help themselves.
He smiled, almost sadly. He could tell I’d made up my mind. We
shook hands, and then he said something I didn’t quite understand at
the time.
‘Well, Keith, I’m sure you’ll make a fine police officer. If there’s one
thing the police force needs, it’s men with ethics.’

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 7 9/4/20 3:35 pm


8 DRUGS, GUNS AND LIES

On my last day at home, I packed my bags and slipped the twenty­­


dollar note Mum had given me into my wallet. I  would take the
motor rail to Townsville, where I had a ticket for the train going down
Queensland’s long coast to Brisbane. I gave Mum a hug and a kiss, and
my stepfather reluctantly shook my hand.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘those bastards’ll make you swear to arrest your
own mother.’

Drugs, Guns & Lies_TXT.indd 8 9/4/20 3:35 pm

Potrebbero piacerti anche