October 26, 2025 • 59 mins
I sat down with Keith Banks and, mate, what a ride. From joining the cops at 17 to going deep undercover in the 70s drug world, then tactical ops, corruption, grief, survivor guilt, and the long road out of PTSD. We got into the messy middle most people skip over… the drinking to sleep, the hypervigilance, the identity crash, and the moment a stranger handed him a psychiatrist’s card that changed everything.
This one’s about the real cost of being the tough one, why empathy and vigilance can coexist, and how vulnerability is not just a buzzword, but the way back. If you’ve ever tried to white-knuckle your way through pain, this ep will land.
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KEITH BANKS
Website: keithbanks.com.au
TIFFANEE COOK
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
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Know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
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reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Keith Banks welcome to
(00:54):
Roll with the punches. You one of those blokes that
I feel like, straight up I can just call banksy
and I don't know why. I don't know why you've
got that energy to you, but you do well.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It's a good old Australian thing, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Tip You know you're shortened the name and I've been
called banks in most of my life. But I'm very choosy.
You can, so I'll let you into the club.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh lucky, lucky, it's funny I was just sitting down
before for jumping on and meeting you officially, and I
just felt like that, and I was like, why do
you feel like you'd already know about Keith Banks? You don't, don't.
This is first time face to face, well on screen
really Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Oh that's nice to know. It's nice to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah. Would you like to give yourself a bit of
an intro to the audience, my listeners and me of course,
as to how you introduce yourself these days?
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah, these days I introduced myself as an author and
a keynote speaker, particularly around mental health. So my background
was my first job. I was in the cops in
Queensland from nineteen seventy five, so I was a kid.
I joined the police Academy of the year, turned seventeen,
(02:03):
did two years in the academy, got yelled at socialized,
told to cut my hair, polished my boots, make my bed,
march all of it, and then and then then left
that and got sworn in as an operational cop when
I was nineteen, worked in uniform four or three years,
(02:24):
volunteered for deep undercover work in the drug world, and
my whole life changed. I went deep undercover. I was
a non drinker, non smoker, trained in martial arts five
days a week, and then god, six months later, I'm
drinking like a fish, smoking dope, you know, having the
occasional cigarette. Just my whole world changed.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Rout. Yeah. Yeah, First, what was the appeal for joining
the police force?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Look, I think, like a lot of cops to if
I grew up in probably not the best circumstances. You know,
I was academically bright. And I say that with all
due you know, self deprecation, I suppose, but I was
academically bright, and it was my way out of a
childhood of domestic abuse, and I just it was either
(03:16):
the police or the army. And I had this need
as a kid to protect people from others, because having
grown up in an environment doesn't take a strength to
figure that out. And I just literally could not stay
at that home twelve more months. Had I stayed there
for twelve months, I would have probably been successful in
getting into the Royal Military College Dounetrun in those days
(03:38):
as an Army officer trainee, which is I think something
I wanted to do. Then the police force really was
as attractive, and it was just probably a means to
get out more quickly. And my intention was, you know,
I'll escape from that background. I'll go to smiler and
paid a wage. I will be for a while, go
(04:00):
to you he study law and so on. But in reality,
within God, I would say, three months or so of
becoming an operational cop, the whole idea of doing a
law degree went out the window. I wasn't interested at all,
and then just pursued a career in law enforcement for
twenty years.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And what drove the non drink and non smoker to
do it oneint eighty and change their ways?
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah? Look, I think I think most of us when
we're young, have maybe a drive to change the world,
you know, change society, contribute et cetera, and back. And
I say this nicely way before you were born, because
I'm an old guy now, Jesus. Back in the seventies
in Australia, there was a massive epidemic of heroin flooding
(04:47):
into the country from the southeast of the Golden Triangle
via a criminal organization known as the myster Asia Syndicate,
and we saw kids dying. Literally every shift you'd go
to at least one drug overdose, one heroin overdose, and
I just I just had this whole need to do
something to contribute to fight that, I guess. And the
(05:12):
way for me to do it I discovered there was
an undercover unit in the drug squad, and deep undercover unit.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Not like the movies.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
This is you know, you get assumed identities and just
live in the world. And I wanted to do something
that was genuinely going to try to save lives. And
that's the naive, nice approach I had. I just didn't
realize how much the world would change me. So I just,
you know, was an innocent kid from the bush and
a pretty street wise cop for you know, twenty two.
(05:42):
I was almost twenty two, but I had no idea
about what I was getting into.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh, tell me more about that, because I like, it's
one of the most fascinating things about being human is
we have such a such a huge capacity for so much,
but also what seems like a really limited capacity to
always recognize what we are in the middle of it
when we're in the middle of it.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Actually, Look,
it's that's why I wrote my first book about it.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
It takes a.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Lot more to probably describe that world than we can
do it justice to it in an hour or so.
But in a nutshell working undercover in those days, and
things have changed these days, thank god, because the welfare
of undercover agents wasn't at the forefront of thinking of
the police force. Believe me, we were all young. We're
(06:35):
all all men. There were no women in the unit
in those days, and we were all kids, you know.
Like it was a month before I turned twenty two
that I went under one of my mates I worked with,
So I thought, was this really old guy was twenty five,
you know, and there were I think there were five
of us at that stage at a time who were
undercovers and basically went in there. We invented our own
(06:59):
eye identities, made our own backstories, you know. We had
got a plate full of false number plates, so we
used our own cars. Primitive it was used their own
use their own cars, put false number plates in our cars.
We got paid mileage allowances and whatever. But there was
no training course, so you basically were sink or swim.
(07:23):
And the first month, maybe three weeks, I was teamed
up with an existing undercover guy and I went out
with him to make drug buyers and just watched and
tried to learn as much as I could from him.
But I had no idea what I was doing, you know,
I think that the first operation was around Brisbane. To think,
I know the first operation was around Brisbane, and this
guy was I was buying hash and I wasn't buying
(07:45):
any smack or heroin in those days that came later.
I was buying dope, hash, some acid and some speed
precursor to ice. And he was just suss, just incredibly
sus about me because I had I was still such
a nice young man. I was polite, you know, and
(08:06):
to fit into that world you have to develop a
character that's a bit different.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So I just I really learned by.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Making a lot of mistakes in that first that first
few months, or the first couple of months. One of
the things I remember, I went to knock on his
door and I knocked, and he came to the door
and said, fuck man. I thought it was the cops.
I said, oh why, He said, because you're you're knock
on the door like a cop does. And I thought, oh, okay,
Just there's something to learn right there, you know, just
(08:34):
little things like that. Yeah, And it was such again
when you're naive. You do go along with things that
you think are necessary for the greater good. So, you know,
I started drinking in pubs because I had to. I
didn't drink. I didn't still like alcohol, but I did
because I had to. Smoking weed. It's pretty hard to
(08:56):
buy a ten pound deal from an outlaw motorcycle club
and not sample the product, you know. So it was
just all these changes of lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
That past hr these days, oh there was.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
No hr man. The term hadn't even been invented.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Oh wow.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
And you know, it was like it's a strange. It
was a strange world in those days, because the police
force knew that we were smoking weed. The police force
knew that there were a couple of the guys who
were doing worse than that. You know, one of them
developed a heroin addiction that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Was horrible, very sad.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
He left the police force and became an armed robber
because he needed to feed his addictions somehow. But they
all knew what was happening. It was informally condoned, but
formally frowned on, if that makes sense. So a lot
of things in that sort of never gray world of
policing were happening. And in those days as well, Queensland
(09:56):
Police had a It wasn't widespread, but it was enough
pretty severe corruption of cops. So you know, there were
cops who were selling drugs, there were cops who were
taking bribes. There were cops who were protecting criminal gangs
in prostitution and organized crime and so on, and some.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Of them were in the drug squad as well.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
So not only were you working undercover with no no
backup or support, you had to be bloody careful who
you spoke to, who you trusted. So it was a
whole whole different environment and I never realized how tricky
it was until many years later when I just sat
back and started analyzing, you know, what we did and
(10:39):
how it all worked out, and it you know, undercover.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Like I say, I do.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I do a lot of keynote speaking now on mental
health and metal fitness and so on, and part of
my presentation is talking.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
About those days.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And I don't know whether you ever heard of an
eighties television show called Miami Wece. It was, you know,
the good looking guys with the.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Sea's ferraris and stuff, And.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
People often asked me what it was like to work undercover,
and I said, well, I'll tell you what it wasn't like.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
It wasn't like that. You know, it's a hat.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
There was no surveillance on us, there were no back
It's not like the movies. We would just buy ourselves
the majority of the time and just operating on our wits.
And once I learned how to speak drug talk like
drug talk, once I learned how to speak about drug dealing,
and I could talk about the weights I was buying
in a profit margin I was going to make and
(11:36):
all of that. I became pretty good at it, and
so hence I bought a lot of heroin open probably
the next eighteen months of my undercover.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
World far out like what what was the I guess
the split off of cops in that position that crossed
to the dark side.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah, I had a couple of mates who he went
to jail and god cross to the dark side, not
for corruption. But Harry, the guy I mentioned, had a
heroin addiction. He started using heroin because he had to,
and a lot of us have addictive personalities, and once
he started injecting that shit, he just quickly became addicted
(12:23):
to it, and he continued to be given heroin for
the rest of his undercover career by particular corrupt police
because it suited their purposes to have an undercover who
could walk into a drug deal and shoot up. It
was horrible. And one of the other guys went to
jail a few years later because he developed a psychological
(12:45):
addiction to weed. And I'm a big one for drug reform,
and that's maybe another conversation we'll have, But he was
in a situation where he just needed a smoke pot
every day to cope, and consequence of his undercover role
as Harry's heroin addiction was And my mate just stupidly
took a four hundred dollars kickback from a crook who
(13:09):
he agreed not to prosecute for an assault. And what
he didn't realize.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Is the crook had rolled over was working for the
misconduct misconduct commissioning.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
So my mate was charged with official coruption and went
to joh for two years. But you know the rest
of us, you know, crossing to the dark side didn't happen.
Certainly didn't happen for me. I smoked way too much
pot and broke some rules, but I never I never
acted corruptly or and neither did the other.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Guys that we worked with.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
We just had a completely different change of life style
and attitude from being normal cops.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And it was bloody hard to go back to being
a normal cop after all of that.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
So we were all touched by it, all changed by it,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
What were the differences, like, what was what changed in you?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
From a enom well I did two years undercover. I
was twenty the ripe old age of twenty four when
I came back to normal uniform work. A kid, yeah child,
Yeah okay. I was rebellious, I was cynical. I was jaded.
I was hyper vigilant. I did not trust anybody outside
my immediate circle. I couldn't form long lasting relationships for
(14:23):
a while because I just couldn't be emotionally available. I
still smoked pot when I could get my hands on it,
because I preferred smoking a joint to drinking. So I
had a real attitude about drug use, broke a lot
of rules, you know, just just a completely changed person.
(14:43):
And I've often reflected on it. Had I not worked undercover,
I would have been a black and white cop, as in,
you're either a bad guy or a good guy. And
I don't want to see anything in between, etc. Which
I don't think policing is all about.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So on a.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Positive side, when I came out of undercover, I had
a real change of attitude and looked at like through
a different lens. So there's no black and white, it's
all just shades of gray. So I found I was
able to talk to people more on their low offenders,
more on their level.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I was more.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Empathetic, I reckon. I was still a tough cop. I
went from that back into criminal investigation as a young detective,
and I dealt with my feasure of pretty tough bad offenders.
But I just had a different view of the world,
and I think a better view of the world than
I would have if I hadn't lived in the world
(15:43):
masquerading as a drug dealer, you know, and just getting
to see the other side of the coin, as it were.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
It really blurs the lines, doesn't it. When you when
you're thrown in there and you've got to pave your
own way, make your own decisions, decisions that really don't
live on the same side as the law that you're
working to represent.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Like wow, but that was Yeah, Look, working undercover, you have
to live by your wits. So you know a lot
of risks in there. And the main risk was for me,
probably two being recognized by people. And it happened to
me a couple of times. So I was recognized in
some pretty tricky situations by people I've.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Gone to school.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
You called me by my right name, not my assumed name.
That takes a bit of talking to get out of that.
The other thing was the fear of getting ripped off. Yeah,
so sure you're worried about being exposed as a cop,
but it'd take a pretty brave guy to murder an
undercover cop because you just you draw the crabs.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
As we used to say, you know, yeah, you just
run too much risk.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
But if people thought I was another drug dealer, a
rival drug dealer, they have no hesitation in cutting the throat,
ripping me off, stealing my money, still in my drugs.
So you've developed this, like I said before, hypervigilance, which
is a sign of postmat express for it, and so
hyper vigilant.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
All the time.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
And the other thing was when I'll speak from a
personal experience, but the other undercovers have told me the
same thing. When I went back to normal policing, not
a lot of cops trusted me for a while because
their attitude was, well, you've been lying for a living
for the last two years. Why the fuck could we
trust you with what we're doing as in legitimate policing.
(17:36):
Why would we trust that you're one of us? Why
would we trust that you're not still one of them?
So all of that identity crisis was happening in addition
to no reintegration process. I sound like I'm winging, but
I have to say working undercover was fucking rush and
it was something that you can never really duplicate anywhere else.
(18:00):
An adrenaline. Adrenaline and fear of blood brothers. Yeah, one
feeds the other, and it's just it's something that's really
difficult to give up.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So what's it like to hold empathy or cultivate empathy
or have empathy when you're you're trained in an environment
that is hyper vigilant all the time? Because can those
(18:34):
two things even coexist?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
For me?
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Yeah, And when I say I came out, I was
more apathetic. I would interview some pretty hard crooks, robbers, safebreakers,
professional cooks, I call them, and I'd want to know
about their childhood. I don't want to know how they
felt about things, so I could empathize. I didn't sympathize,
but I could empathize, and in that way, quite syneekly,
(18:59):
I could have them confessed to me certain things they've done.
So the ultimate aim of an interview is to either
get a confession or to have a response. That people
will lie to you and then you can disprove those lives.
So it's about getting communication happening. And I just found that,
you know, I was I was genuinely interested in crooks
(19:22):
because I wanted to try and.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Figure out how they got that way.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
If I hadn't worked undercover, they hadn't stood side by
side with heroin dealers and had some interesting guys and
had beers with them, I wouldn't have given a rats
about offenders. So so that's that's that worked for me
and the heart of vigilance. It just became part of
my life. You know, even these days, I still find
(19:46):
myself checking mirrors for surveillance and driving like you know,
someone's following me around. It's not a bad not a
bad habit in Melbourne, believe me. Given all the carjacking
and ship we've got happened about here.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
M M.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
So it's all making sense. I'm just you know, I'm
trying to verbalize as best I can. But that was
only two years of my career. So when I finished
UC work, I again, as I said, I had this
thirst for adrenaline, and I had this thirst for adventure,
and I always wanted to be anyway when I was
in the academy anyway, I wanted to be at the
(20:23):
sharp end of policing, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
I wanted to be where the action was. So I
saw a squad of.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Operators on the news one night. We were at a
high risk and it was an eskrped job on the
Gold Coast, and these guys jumped out of a truck
with semi automatic rifles and black jumpsuits and bulletproof vests.
And I thought, oh, I've got to get some of that.
So that's exactly what I did. Yeah, I volunteered, applied
(20:50):
for that, was interviewed, and was accepted into that squad.
Worked in that part time. It was part time in
those days. There seams are all full time around the
country now, but we trained four days a week on
an army base, learned weaponry, tactics, fire and movement all
of that stuff. And then I was approached to be
(21:12):
one of the first full time members of the tactical
team in Queen's Land in nineteen eighty seven. So that
was the next you know, like big adventurous thing that
I could do in the cops. There are cops tiff
that you know, they go to work and they spend
forty years doing normal police work. Love them there, that's great,
good on them. There are cops who love to write
(21:32):
traffic tickets. Not such a big fan of them, but
you know, whatever they choose to do, they choose to do.
But I never wanted to be one of them. And
a lot of my friends were the same, particularly its undercovers.
We all sort of gravitated to you know, sharp end
policing as it were.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, and in that tactical team, what are some of
the memorable jobs and what was your first big job?
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Like, oh, god, the first first siege I winned domestic siege.
This guy had a high powered rifle because back in
those days, you could go to kmart or any sports
for him by pretty much any high powered semi automatic
rifle you wanted without a yeah, without a driver's license,
without anything it was just you know, pre Port Arthur,
(22:17):
everybody had a gun.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Oh my god, that's just don't even seemed like the
same lifetime, does it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Yeah, and I'm really pleased to hear that because you
haven't grown up in that environment.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
And I'm from Tazzy, so yeah, I think there's a
lot of guns still buried in Tavy when all that happened.
But yeah, domestic siege. This guy, I can't remember what
the issue was, but he was firing shots and were
surrounded it. We eventually crashed down the door and went
in and grabbed him and you know, no shots were
five thank god. So we had hundreds of jobs like
(22:50):
that where either domestic siege is or high risk raids
you know, where the offender was armed, and we'd make
certain plans of either vehicle intercepts or house assaults, etc.
And go in and grab them. But the big job
that affected me badly it was July twenty nine, eighty seven.
(23:12):
We were tasked to raid a house in Virginia and Brisbane.
That was the house of Australia's number two most wanted
I think, and Queensland's number one most wanted.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
There was a violent.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Arm robber and an escape from long Band Sydney in
a nutshell. It was the same week that our corruption
inquiry our Royal Commission in to coruption had started in
Queensland and the headlines weren't very good. Our commissioner eventually
went to jail for twelve years, I think for corruption.
The premiere was ours to the government was our, so
(23:46):
it was just a high time. But we were instructed
to do this raid on the Wednesday morning, in the
early hours before the final newspapers were printed. This is
how cynical I am about many things. I'm convinced this
was the case that our bosses, not my immediate bosses,
(24:06):
but they're those in charge of policing, wanted us to
go in and execute a warrant to get a headline
to know number one most wanted captured to take attention
away from the bad headlines that were coming out about
the corruption inquiry. The problem was they didn't allow us
to use the tear gas that I wanted to use
(24:29):
in the distraction, flash bangs that I wanted to use,
et cetera, and our ballistic vests were went up to
scratch because of budget. When we went into the house
the guy opened up on us and killed one of
my team members badly, worunted another, and two of us
shot and killed him.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And what really fucked me for god, at least.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
At least probably twenty eight years, I would think, was
post amatic stress disorder and survivor guilt because Pete, who
was killed, who was murdered, was a good friend, and
that just that just shook my whole world. So that
(25:14):
was that was a life changing event. And you know,
if I thought I was cynical and jaded before, after
that happened, I went through a whole raft of what
I didn't know was PDSD. The term hadn't been invented
in the eighties. You know, I was shocked, I was grief,
I was numb, I was I had flashbacks nightmare's anger
(25:38):
and put a gun in my mouth probably five weeks
after the job, because I was sitting at home and
just drank most of a bottle of scotch. I did
that most nights to try to sleep, and put a
gun in my mouth and thought about squeezing the trigger
and all of that was incredibly life altering, of course,
(26:00):
but in those days, there was no there was no
medical health sorry, mental health or trauma support, which wasn't
heard of the you know, the answer to grief in
those days. And most cops saw ship during their ship
that nice people should never see. The answer to handling
grief and trauma and shop was to get pissed. So
(26:23):
the drinking culture was a huge part of policing. So
I spent god, I spent years you know doing that,
just drinking to numb everything. And then I stayed in
the tactical team for another two years, I think. But
the problem was see getting on my life story now
(26:43):
too without having to ask questions how good is this?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Is great?
Speaker 4 (26:49):
The problem was I became quite homicidal is the wrong word.
But I volunteered and I wanted to be on every
single operation I could be on that had the henshall
to shoot someone Yeah, because it again doesn't take a
shrink to figure it out. I want a pure revenge
for the death of the murder of my mate. And
(27:10):
I realized in one particular operation where it was a
siege again a guy had held his mother hostage and
he'd fired thirty odd shots at the police and set
a police car and fire and so on, and we're
about to go in and get him. And I just
turned to my officerde and so I'm going to kill
this tree, you know, And I'd never spoken like that before.
(27:36):
And he was shot. Thankfully he survived. But I woke
up the next morning and thought my dark side as
well and truly taking over. It's sort of like Lord
Byron got heard of Lord Byron the poet. His wife
classified him as mad, bad and dangerous to know. And
I was just turning into a dark, dark human being,
(27:57):
and I thought, I've got to leave this this area
held out of it before it takes Tailor.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Two, how do you like, did you speak to someone
about that? How do you recognize that? And then how
do you take a step or towards something.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
There was no one to speak to, you know. The
culture well in the tactical world, and it's certainly changed
now because special operations people around the country. Every taxic
team has a different name, but its special Special Emergency
Response Team in Queensland. Every time there's a shooting and
(28:34):
life is lost, there's there's counseling, there's follow up as assessment,
there's support and the research shows all over the world
that the earlier intervention can happen in a traumatic situation,
the quicker or the less chance of any disorder of
pastraumatic express disorder developing is we had nothing, so there
(28:57):
was no one to talk to. I would certainly not
have said that to anybody or verbalized it, because I
would have been taken off team immediately, and rightly so.
But I didn't want to lose that identity. That was
my purpose and identity, and.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
I loved it.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
I loved the work, but I knew if I stayed
there I would probably end up shooting someone outside justification
and facing the consequences. So you know, I was just
just so full of vengeance, and because to explain that
that sounds a bit cold bladder, but to explain that better.
(29:31):
Before Pete was murdered, we had hundreds of jobs where
people are armed, and we'd always give them chance after
chance after chance after chance to put the fire um down.
I decided, after he was shot in front of me,
that was never going to happen again, and every time
there was someone with a firearm, he was going to
go down. Yeah, so we did. We did engage in
(29:52):
a few firefights after that, but I just I could
see myself being in a situation where if someth I
knew someone had a firearm before they even raised it,
I was going to drop them. And that's just completely wrong.
So I knew my shortcomings. I knew that that was
a potential. So I just went to my boss and said, look,
I think it's time I moved on. And I left
(30:15):
that and went back into the world of covert surveillance
and intelligence gathering. So complete change of work, but you know,
I still had the whole still had the whole psychological
shit just bubbling under the surface, because again, there was
no recognition of pastmat express disorder. We didn't know what
the hell it was. I actually thought it was just
(30:38):
me for a long time until I started meeting or
associating with people who were struggling in a similar way.
I did a bit of research in the US. I
was doing an undergrad Bachelor of Arts and Policing degree
and I was at the library researching something, and I
came across some police journals and started reading about this
(31:00):
this guy and I think it was California, Orange County maybe,
who had these symptoms. And they were excessive drinking, sleeplessness, nightmares, flashbacks,
short term anger, promiscuity, and one other. I think I
remember eating this, going holy shit, this must be a thing,
(31:22):
you know, And a lot of it was self realization.
But I still wasn't brave enough to go and talk
to a psych.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Didn't even know what folks were, to be honest.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And the only thing I did do was go to
my doctor and just said, you know, I was sitting
outside because I just burned out. And I said, I
remember thinking, what do I say to him? Should I
say I've got a lot of anger? Should I say,
you know, thinking about chilling a lot of people?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Or whatever?
Speaker 4 (31:49):
It was just to exaggerate slightly, but I remember he
just opened the door and walked and he said, how
are you Keith? And I burst in tears and I
couldn't stop crying for ten And yeah, just all of
that that trauma and sab me some time off, et cetera.
But that was about all I did, and I just
(32:11):
kept on working. So cost me my first marriage. I
married a lovely, lovely woman who I woke up one
morning and just couldn't be there anymore, such and such
a state of darkness and depression and joylessness and hopelessness,
and I just said, I just can't be married anymoreally
(32:33):
forever ever have remorse about that. And I slept in
my office for three nights, no plan, until one of
my teammates said, you know, what the hell are you doing?
And she said, look, I've got a spare room at
my place. Is come and share the rent, moving until
you can sort yourself out. So all of that was,
you know, in hindsight, I'm able to talk about this
(32:56):
quite openly now, but it took me a long time
to get here, and it was just a horrible dark
time of life.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
And then I did some other stuff and some other
interesting stuff and almost got blown to bits on by
a guy in a siege on a Saturday afternoon. Had
a box full ofgelic light and the hand grenade and
a rifle, and I turned up to in any Unit's called,
et cetera at Brisbane. I was running an undercover operation
(33:25):
at the time, but you know, heard the any Unit
shots fired and raced to the job as any cop
would do. And I ran up the stairs of this
this building in the center of the city and found
myself face to face with the offender. Put my gun
down and went in and spoke with him for whatever reason,
and I spent hour and a half talking to him
(33:48):
and talking him out of killing us both and blowing
up the building. And you know, and and I was
I've often reflected on whether I don't think I had
a death wish, but I certainly felt that that need
to resolve this because no one else was doing it.
(34:08):
It wasn't my job. I'm not a trained negotiator. I
just went in there and sat with him and thought,
fuck this, I'm going to sort this shit out. Level
of arrogance, I suppose, and maybe you know my shrink
and I talk about this a bit. It was potentially
me trying to prove to myself that I was more
worthwhile than what I thought I was. Who the hell
who knows why we do things? And then yeah, that
(34:31):
was all resolved, thankfully, And then I was just more
broken than I realized. I ended up resigning from policing
and moving into the corporate world twenty years after I started.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
So, you know what, I think, as you're telling this,
it really highlights to me that how what a vulnerable
state it is for anyone.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
To be.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
In the middle of understanding what am I in the
middle of and finding out what that is, because what you,
who you speak to and how you approach that conversation
dictates where it can go. Like mental health, I mean,
especially back then. We know a lot more now, so
it's great we have the ability to learn to know
(35:21):
some learn from people who have been through it, see
some of the cues and some of the things that
start to happen, and put too and two together. But
I mean, I guess for you, it's like how you
approach that situation with and with whom dictates any number
of answers in inverted commas that you might have been
given and perceptions you would to walk away with about
(35:45):
what's going on.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, Look I carried it for years. I
left police thing, I went into the corporate world. I
did an MBA, I worked in various senior spots and
so on. But I was near happy. I was never settled.
I remarried and we had two beautiful girls who were
now twenty nine and twenty seven. But I was still
(36:09):
just in this whole state of flux. I guess. So
I went from job to job. You know, I'd be
quite SENI quite well paid. But if I wasn't a
job for two years and people kissed me off, I'd go,
well that fuck you, Jack, I'm out of here and
I've moved to something else, which is which is one.
You know, I understand what it is now. But in
those days, I just thought, you know, I thought the anger.
(36:32):
I thought I was just an angry man, you know.
I thought that was just part of my personality makeup.
I thought the you know, the the short tempered, of
the angry, short tempered, but the lack of patience with people.
I thought, oh, it was just must be me, just
must be part of you know, growing older or something
all those and and it wasn't until I was sorry
(36:54):
I had. Eleven years after left the police, I had
a major, major anxiety attack for no reason, just no
catalyst at all, just crushed me. And the friend of
mine who'd recruited me out of policing into the corporate world,
happened to in me stam ut here going and start
think I'm fucked, you know, And he went right where.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I stayed there and drove straight over from the other side.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Of Melbourne, and on the way he'd already made an
appointment with a counselor that he'd been seeing because he'd
been God his life, he'd been shot and badly wounded
as a cop as well, and he'd gone through his
own trauma. But he came and calmed me down and
just said, right, I've made an appointment, and if I
have to grab you by the throat and take you.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
There, you're going.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
And I remember saying to him, I don't need to
see any counselor. That's you know, that's bullshit. Anyway, that embarked.
That was my first session exposure to counseling, which I
found was quite liberating. But you know, I didn't think
I had an issue. I was in denial for quite
(37:57):
some time.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
And I saw her for a while.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
That I didn't, and I saw somewhere else and I didn't,
and I saw someone else and I didn't. And I
was sort of going from counselor to counselor because I
just wasn't two things. I wasn't accepting that I had
a mental disorder, because you know, that's quite confronting for
an alpha male to go. I think I'm a bit
fucking nuts. And so yeah, I did that for the
(38:24):
years and I finally and I love this story because
you know, it changed my life. I was working as
a deputy director of a membership association. And I was
in the city meeting with government training people. So we
had we had a register training organization. Anyway, I'm sitting
at this meeting, you know, board sitting with public servants,
going oh god, when did the size of trolls come out?
(38:46):
And I chatting to this guy beside me who worked
for the government, and I just thought, there's something about
him that's a bit different. It's, you know, not your
normal public servant. So we had the copy break or whatever,
and I said, oh, you know, what's your background in
his I was in the army and I said, oh,
whereabouts and said the SAS And I said, iew people
in the sas and As. I ask every veteran, how's things.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Going for you?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
How are you, you know, after Afghanistan? And he said
he said, look, I have some challenging times at most
of all, you know, for most of it, I'm pretty good.
He led through his fishing around his wallet and pulled
out a business card and gave it to me and said,
I think you might need to give this woman a call.
And I said really, And I looked at the card
and that was psychiatrists, And I said, does it show
(39:31):
that much and he said, mate, it's written all over
your face.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
God.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
So like you just said, you can see ques, you
can pick up behaviors, et cetera. And so I made
an appointment with her and went to speak with her,
speak with her, went to a session, and after the
first hour his defense is always sorry. Comedy has always
been my defense mechanism. And I said, so, Doc, what
do you reckon? You know, nuts, just played nuts? And
(39:57):
she said, you have chronic pds the anxiety and most
likely depression. And I went shit because I'd always thought
that I knew what PDSD was by then, but I
always thought that the people who had done really dangerous stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I says the guy, Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Know, Yeah, how deluded was I?
Speaker 4 (40:20):
And that's the thing, tip, you know, I know, I
just looked at what I did as being a cop,
and on reflection, I've got metals for valor and bravery
and shit and and on reflection I've looked at it
and gone, wow, what the hell was I thinking? Because
I've seen my friend murdered, almost got blown up by
a homicidal Vietnam veteran. I've been working undercovered all that stuff.
(40:44):
And that's when I said to her, well, that actually
makes me feel great. And I remember she looked at
me and said, I love strengths. They always answer what
you say with the question and why do you say that?
And I said, because I now know I haven't been
imagining it or exaggerating it or inventing it. So let's
(41:04):
let's figure out how we fix this stuff. Yeah. And
that really that was a watershed moment because I thought, Okay,
I've got it. I'm not just an angry guy. I'm
not just emotionally distant through personality. I've got a brain injury,
which is trauma.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yea.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
And we work through a lot, and.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
I've done a lot of research and reading and self
assessment and and I'm happy to say that, you know,
I'm pretty much on the other side of it. You
never completely get over postmat express. That's the bad news.
The good news is your life can become incredibly richer,
incredibly and happier, you know. So it's so hence that's
(41:45):
why I talk about it so much. You know, you know,
anybody who listens to these podcasts or these media interviews
that I do with people like you, if there's this
one person out there who listens to this and goes, fuck,
what this guy's saying is like resonates with because that's
what I'm thinking. And if they understand they're not alone,
that has a major major impact on how they then
(42:09):
start to seek treatment or help, or open up or
converse or you know, realize that there's a way out.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Well, I'm interested when you were going to see the
number of psychologists that you did, when you still were
in that kind of denial phase. What was your what
did you what were you seeking? What were you looking
to overcome? What was the answer you were looking for.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I didn't know what I was looking for, but I
was looking for an answer, if that makes sense. You know,
I knew that there was something wrong with me, and
I wanted to try to find someone who could help
me understand what the hell it was the problem is.
And I'm probably an old cliche, but I use it
finding the right count stores like speed dating, you know, yep, yep,
(43:01):
nut Oh maybe nah, you know. So for me, it
was about getting the right relationship and the right level
of trust. You know, opening yourself up and being vulnerable
is the key, I think to recovery and resilience, of course,
but to have that to find that relationship and be
(43:21):
able to be completely honest. I just couldn't find anybody
until I met this woman who just don't know. I
don't know what she does. I don't know how she
did it, but she just supported and helped me understand
and work towards recovery much more effective than anyone else
I've ever met. And I don't know what a secret is.
(43:42):
I wish I did. I think it's just, you know,
it's like it's like any relationship you need to trust,
you need to absolutely trust. And she has said to
me a few times, what you say to me, I
don't judge you on And that's probably a major thing
as well, because I spent so many years judging myself
and going through the order, could have sugar order, what
(44:05):
if you know, et cetera, which is just pretty self
destructive because you can't change the past. Yeah, So you know,
it's it's enabled me to have these conversations now. And
I could never talk about that operation where Pete was
shot and killed without bursting and its ears. Couldn't do
it for years, And I understand now it's survivor guilt.
(44:26):
It's it's a combination of survivor guilt's a combination of
postmount express and you'd probably know the disorder happens when
the industry is to be your life for more than
six or eight weeks. You know, twenty five years is
probably a fairly good men.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Probably ticks the box keep probably probably just scrapes.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Yeah, scrapes and yeah, yeah, yeah. So this thought, this
is all your fault, this came across became a you
know what forty five minutes when you said, give me
a bit of your background.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, we've got a few more days to get through this.
I find it interesting like that. I find it to
be a common misconception when people first are introduced to
that idea of seeing a therapist or a counselor, that
it'll be a conversation like it's okay, I'll just go
and get the fixed, get the answer to fix the thing.
(45:14):
And as you were talking, it reminded me of I
think it was maybe my third counselor myself friend A
friend went to this counselor and recommended them. So I
went to see him and we had three sessions. So
I'm going there for childhood trauma, and I'm I've decided
I've googled it, right, I'm like, oh, this happened. Oh
this some of these attributes to my personality and these
(45:36):
things I find challenging in relationships and connection and stuff.
Some of this I think this is related. So I
go there and I'm like, okay, so this is this,
this and this fix me? And I remember three of
the third session in he goes so tiff Normally, by
the time I've had three sessions with somebody, I've got
a really strong sense of who they are and what
(45:59):
they need from me. And I'm like yep, and he goes,
I just don't get that from you. And We're just
sitting there staring at each other, and I was like,
I remember just thinking, well, fuck, you're the expert in
people's psychology, so if you don't have the answer of
how to fix me, which was still my like oh
(46:20):
you just fix it. I'll tell you what has happened,
and you just whatever you do in this magic fucking room,
you fix it. The poor bloke. Could she get a
more difficult client, you know?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
And that, yeah, you're right, you know, people, I don't
know what I expected. I expected that i'd go there
and maybe she'd give me steps one to ten. But
you know, as you know, it's like it's like a
Christmas present when you go, shit, I'm actually now putting
two and two together. Or she'd say to me, so
(46:54):
your childhood trauma and the way you interact in a relationship,
do you think there's a connection between this and that.
It became our running joke because I just go, fuck,
you've got me again. Why didn't I think of that?
And she just says, you don't because you're right in
the middle of it. You don't put two and two together.
That's what That's what a good counselor will do. They'll
(47:15):
go do you think this? Do you think that? And
you go, wow, you know, and that's that's such a
powerful thing to realize that. And so I'd be buzzing
after a session with her and be driving home going,
let me think about this. Okay, maybe there's something I'm
going to take a note of that I'm going to
(47:36):
talk for about that next time, because it's a combination.
So I think what a good counselor does is they
it's like a good coach. You know, a coach will
teach you how to box. The coach will teacher martial arts,
a coach will teach you how to swim or run.
They will give you They'll open up your ability to
self analyze and go. Right, this is what they're telling
(47:58):
me I can work on. Now here's a technique that
I hadn't thought about before that I'll put into my training,
you know what I mean. So I think that I
think that's your analogy. Is a good counselor can have
you start to just delve into things. And what she
has helped me understand is so in the tactical world,
(48:18):
in shooting ADF whatever, there's I think called the double tap.
And a double tap is two quick shots to the
chest or two quick shots to the head. And you know,
if you're really good at a double tap, and I
used to be, you can actually have the rounds like
just sit right beside each other. So I've got a
PDSD double tap my terminology and it's childhood trauma. And
(48:39):
I clearly developed post traumatic stress in my environment there
with her help, I've figured that out. And then the
trauma of the operation where Pete was killed. And then
combine that a bit with undercover. So I've got childhood
and cop double tap trauma. Yeah, and when I first
put all that shit together and spoke about that. She said, yeah,
(49:01):
you're right, you are absolutely great. And what she was
waiting for me to do was put the puzzle pieces together.
And when we put the puzzle pieces together, then we
talk about what underlies it. So like an onion with
many layers, that's where everybody has drawna and then you
figure out, Okay, what's going to work for me. So
(49:23):
for me, Holy Trinity, diet, sleep, exercise, and it's also
breath work and mindfulness and journaling. I'm not great at
I wrote two books, I probably journal way of them,
and on that writing those was an incredible capacity to
get a lot of stuff out there. But for me,
(49:44):
it's just that continual recovery for the rest of my
life now. But the big thing is I have so
much fucking happiness in my life and so much joy
that I didn't have for literally a couple of decades. Yeah,
I'm sort of back to being there that the older
version of the young guy, the young Banksy that was,
(50:06):
you know, full of life and people are going you know,
i'd walk into a room, I'd bounce into a room,
not walk into a room. You know, it's just full
of enthusiasm and a zest for light and that's come back,
you know, and I'm just so thankful that had the meeting.
Spoke to the guy a game of the business card.
Now there's sliding doors moments.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, yeah, it's so like it just sounds cliche, but
when I think of everything that's important to me in
my life and everything I love the most and cherish
the most, it comes from the hardship it happened, because
it's what drove it. So, you know, it's it's so
(50:46):
important to I guess peel back those layers of the
onion because we numb stuff, We numb things out. But
I remember that first, you know that first, that first
layer of self awareness was like, what's the point of
this shit? Life was blissful when I thought I was
just fucking you know.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
What do I do with this?
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Like?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
What good is self awareness if I can't just fix it?
And I felt really stuffed at first. It's like what
do I do with that? Now? I know all this
shit about me that once I thought was positive, now
it's actually an anchor? How do I shift that? But
what's beautiful is over time you do and I think
when I finally got the fucking memo on therapy and
(51:32):
figured out that it was the relationship for the work.
It was understanding going when I thought there was nothing
to talk about and life was good, that's when I
learned the most. Or you think you're not changing, and
then they go, hang on a minute to say that again,
and they're like, would old you have said that? You're like, oh, actually,
you're right, I have changed, you know, and we don't
give ourselves that credit.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
Yeah, yeah, spot on.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
It's funny because I felt exactly the same. I'd go
to sessions to come up there's nothing to talk about today,
and then ye six five minslas she's going, well it's awful,
and I've gone, fuck, where did that come from?
Speaker 3 (52:08):
You know?
Speaker 4 (52:09):
And and you're right, it's fake. You know, when you
first go through it, you go fuck.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
I thought it was okay.
Speaker 4 (52:14):
But I look back now on what I was like,
and I'm just like my emotions now to if I
cry at the drop of a hat, i see a
sad movie, I'm a bloody met whereas years ago I
just subjugated all of that. For me, that was the
sign of weakness. I was programmed to be the protector,
the father, the provider, the husband, all of that socialization
(52:38):
that we have no idea that we're subcept to, but
it's sitting there anyway, you know. And once you start
to unpeel all of that and realize that it's programming,
you can allow yourself to be you, you know, and
I'm you know people not everyone likes me, and that's
just the way of the world. For so many years,
(53:00):
I wanted to be liked by everyone, and that goes
back to childhood of course, you know, being in a
domestic abuse situation, getting bashed and so on. So I
wanted to have everyone liked me, and I wanted to
be perfect at everything, and just realized that's a fucking
that's impossible, idiot.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
So you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
And what so resilience there's a great Japanese term, or
a great.
Speaker 3 (53:27):
Martial arts term, sorry because I studied.
Speaker 4 (53:28):
Oka now and karate, which is fall down seven times,
stand up eight and you would have heard that before,
but that that's resilience. People who are resilient are those
who have scars. You're not born with resilience. It's ship
that you go through in life and you survive it
and you learn from it. And you get tougher.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
That's resilience.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
There's ways to build it, of course, you know you.
Dan Pronk writes beautifully about it in the Resilience Shield,
and there are ways to do it and develop it.
But people need to understand that life can be pretty
shit and when you survive those obstacles, that's when you learn.
As long as you learn from them and you don't
(54:12):
let them overwhelm you, that's the key.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
I reckon, Yeah, what's your what's your favorite message to deliver?
Like when you're giving a keynote, what's the one thing
you want that you feel that you give to people
that can help them change.
Speaker 4 (54:31):
Ah, there's probably the main thing is to be authentic
in how you see yourself. Be authentic and how you
deal with others and just let yourself be vulnerable. You know,
I say to people and there are always people in
the room who are struggling, and they don't admit it.
They admit it later, and I say, look, you know,
(54:53):
if you're going through any of the shit that I
went through, and I talk about all the symptoms I had,
but then the ongoing you know, the joylessness and emotional
distance and so on. But if you're going through any
of these, find someone that you trust and say, hey,
you've got five minutes and start the conversation. If you
(55:13):
are the person that someone comes to, give them more
than five minutes and shut the fuck up. Don't try
and solve their problems, because all we want to do
is just have someone sit down and the dirt with
us and listen to our stuff. Yeah, and be there
for us. And I think that's you know, that's the
main message I'll give to people is if you're struggling,
(55:36):
find someone you trust, find someone in your tribe, find
someone you know that you can that you can just
talk to and do it again.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
You know.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
I love the whole concept of value. Okay, day, but
one day a year and close question. Okay, yep, yep,
I'm fine, I'll see you next year. You know, it's
just that's the concept is great, the.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Delivery is bullshit. You know.
Speaker 4 (56:02):
I'm more about if you're talking to someone and you
see someone struggling and we just go, hey, you know,
let's have a coffee. How's the world going for you to?
How's things? Yeah, you know, and just see if that
can elicit a response.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Never doesn't. Don't give up we need.
Speaker 4 (56:19):
We just need to This is your fault. You asked
me a question again. We just need to be understanding
that that life is a struggle. The bookis Do It
Beautifully the Buddhis talk about life is fucking home. Life
is to struggle, and it is and it is a struggle,
and it's our it's our it's our duty as human
(56:41):
beings to look after each other as best we can,
because God knows you might be on the receiving end
of it one day.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
M the you reminded me of Ray Bonnie, who I've
had on the show before. She asks the question what's
it like being you today? I like that, Yeah, which
is her conversation starter around me, and she does a
lot in men's mental health, herself and mazing stuff. But yeah,
you're fascinating to speak to. I dare say I might
(57:10):
have to knock on your door again. I feel like
there's more conversation left in us. But for now, tell
my listeners where they can find your books and access
you and reach out and anything wrong here.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
Thanks Steff. Firstly, I'd love to do that because you know,
I've got a real sense of comfort with you, and
I think we've got a lot of shared stuff that we.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
Can go through.
Speaker 4 (57:30):
So I'm an INSTA B A n K S y
one seven five So Banks you want.
Speaker 2 (57:36):
So everyone's allowed to call you banks? Is that was
all bloody rubbish at the start, as long.
Speaker 4 (57:41):
As there're the one seven five after it. So that's
very funny. So Banks you one seven five on Instagram.
I've got a website Keith banks k E I T
H B A n K S dot com dot Au.
I put seconds of thought into that and on that,
(58:04):
you know, on that website, yeah, that's where my books.
You can buy books from me personally, and I love
to personally inscribe them and each message is different. Or
they're on Amazon book Topia. Most bookstores still have them,
I think. And for those people who don't like reading,
they're on Audible and they're they're voiced by an Australian actor,
(58:24):
Joel Jackson, who's a good friend of mine. Is a
great guy and he's done a great job. So but yeah,
it's again just to put it out there. This isn't
a shameless marketing club because published authors don't get a
lot of money. You know, you don't write books for money? Yeah, yeah,
you know, I wrote them for the message, and I
love the fact that there are lots of people who
(58:44):
read them and contact me to say they've never had
anything to do with cops before, and it's changed their
attitude about policing, which is great.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Love that.
Speaker 4 (58:55):
But yeah, we've we've been waffling on for a while. Tip,
you know, thank you for letting me speak so much.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
No, you're so welcome. I've really enjoyed this so thanks
so much, and we will I will have you back.
So everyone go buy a few books and that's your
Christmas sorded. You've got e Run's Christmas presents now so
perfect perfect, see you mate, see everyone.
Speaker 3 (59:18):
Thanks to you, she.
Speaker 1 (59:21):
Said, it's now never. I got fighting in my blood,
got it.
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends are test Art Family Lawyers.
Know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Keith Banks welcome to
(00:54):
Roll with the punches. You one of those blokes that
I feel like, straight up I can just call banksy
and I don't know why. I don't know why you've
got that energy to you, but you do well.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It's a good old Australian thing, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Tip You know you're shortened the name and I've been
called banks in most of my life. But I'm very choosy.
You can, so I'll let you into the club.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh lucky, lucky, it's funny I was just sitting down
before for jumping on and meeting you officially, and I
just felt like that, and I was like, why do
you feel like you'd already know about Keith Banks? You don't, don't.
This is first time face to face, well on screen
really Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Oh that's nice to know. It's nice to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah. Would you like to give yourself a bit of
an intro to the audience, my listeners and me of course,
as to how you introduce yourself these days?
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah, these days I introduced myself as an author and
a keynote speaker, particularly around mental health. So my background
was my first job. I was in the cops in
Queensland from nineteen seventy five, so I was a kid.
I joined the police Academy of the year, turned seventeen,
(02:03):
did two years in the academy, got yelled at socialized,
told to cut my hair, polished my boots, make my bed,
march all of it, and then and then then left
that and got sworn in as an operational cop when
I was nineteen, worked in uniform four or three years,
(02:24):
volunteered for deep undercover work in the drug world, and
my whole life changed. I went deep undercover. I was
a non drinker, non smoker, trained in martial arts five
days a week, and then god, six months later, I'm
drinking like a fish, smoking dope, you know, having the
occasional cigarette. Just my whole world changed.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Rout. Yeah. Yeah, First, what was the appeal for joining
the police force?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Look, I think, like a lot of cops to if
I grew up in probably not the best circumstances. You know,
I was academically bright. And I say that with all
due you know, self deprecation, I suppose, but I was
academically bright, and it was my way out of a
childhood of domestic abuse, and I just it was either
(03:16):
the police or the army. And I had this need
as a kid to protect people from others, because having
grown up in an environment doesn't take a strength to
figure that out. And I just literally could not stay
at that home twelve more months. Had I stayed there
for twelve months, I would have probably been successful in
getting into the Royal Military College Dounetrun in those days
(03:38):
as an Army officer trainee, which is I think something
I wanted to do. Then the police force really was
as attractive, and it was just probably a means to
get out more quickly. And my intention was, you know,
I'll escape from that background. I'll go to smiler and
paid a wage. I will be for a while, go
(04:00):
to you he study law and so on. But in reality,
within God, I would say, three months or so of
becoming an operational cop, the whole idea of doing a
law degree went out the window. I wasn't interested at all,
and then just pursued a career in law enforcement for
twenty years.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And what drove the non drink and non smoker to
do it oneint eighty and change their ways?
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah? Look, I think I think most of us when
we're young, have maybe a drive to change the world,
you know, change society, contribute et cetera, and back. And
I say this nicely way before you were born, because
I'm an old guy now, Jesus. Back in the seventies
in Australia, there was a massive epidemic of heroin flooding
(04:47):
into the country from the southeast of the Golden Triangle
via a criminal organization known as the myster Asia Syndicate,
and we saw kids dying. Literally every shift you'd go
to at least one drug overdose, one heroin overdose, and
I just I just had this whole need to do
something to contribute to fight that, I guess. And the
(05:12):
way for me to do it I discovered there was
an undercover unit in the drug squad, and deep undercover unit.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Not like the movies.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
This is you know, you get assumed identities and just
live in the world. And I wanted to do something
that was genuinely going to try to save lives. And
that's the naive, nice approach I had. I just didn't
realize how much the world would change me. So I just,
you know, was an innocent kid from the bush and
a pretty street wise cop for you know, twenty two.
(05:42):
I was almost twenty two, but I had no idea
about what I was getting into.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh, tell me more about that, because I like, it's
one of the most fascinating things about being human is
we have such a such a huge capacity for so much,
but also what seems like a really limited capacity to
always recognize what we are in the middle of it
when we're in the middle of it.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Actually, Look,
it's that's why I wrote my first book about it.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
It takes a.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Lot more to probably describe that world than we can
do it justice to it in an hour or so.
But in a nutshell working undercover in those days, and
things have changed these days, thank god, because the welfare
of undercover agents wasn't at the forefront of thinking of
the police force. Believe me, we were all young. We're
(06:35):
all all men. There were no women in the unit
in those days, and we were all kids, you know.
Like it was a month before I turned twenty two
that I went under one of my mates I worked with,
So I thought, was this really old guy was twenty five,
you know, and there were I think there were five
of us at that stage at a time who were
undercovers and basically went in there. We invented our own
(06:59):
eye identities, made our own backstories, you know. We had
got a plate full of false number plates, so we
used our own cars. Primitive it was used their own
use their own cars, put false number plates in our cars.
We got paid mileage allowances and whatever. But there was
no training course, so you basically were sink or swim.
(07:23):
And the first month, maybe three weeks, I was teamed
up with an existing undercover guy and I went out
with him to make drug buyers and just watched and
tried to learn as much as I could from him.
But I had no idea what I was doing, you know,
I think that the first operation was around Brisbane. To think,
I know the first operation was around Brisbane, and this
guy was I was buying hash and I wasn't buying
(07:45):
any smack or heroin in those days that came later.
I was buying dope, hash, some acid and some speed
precursor to ice. And he was just suss, just incredibly
sus about me because I had I was still such
a nice young man. I was polite, you know, and
(08:06):
to fit into that world you have to develop a
character that's a bit different.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So I just I really learned by.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Making a lot of mistakes in that first that first
few months, or the first couple of months. One of
the things I remember, I went to knock on his
door and I knocked, and he came to the door
and said, fuck man. I thought it was the cops.
I said, oh why, He said, because you're you're knock
on the door like a cop does. And I thought, oh, okay,
Just there's something to learn right there, you know, just
(08:34):
little things like that. Yeah, And it was such again
when you're naive. You do go along with things that
you think are necessary for the greater good. So, you know,
I started drinking in pubs because I had to. I
didn't drink. I didn't still like alcohol, but I did
because I had to. Smoking weed. It's pretty hard to
(08:56):
buy a ten pound deal from an outlaw motorcycle club
and not sample the product, you know. So it was
just all these changes of lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
That past hr these days, oh there was.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
No hr man. The term hadn't even been invented.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Oh wow.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
And you know, it was like it's a strange. It
was a strange world in those days, because the police
force knew that we were smoking weed. The police force
knew that there were a couple of the guys who
were doing worse than that. You know, one of them
developed a heroin addiction that.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Was horrible, very sad.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
He left the police force and became an armed robber
because he needed to feed his addictions somehow. But they
all knew what was happening. It was informally condoned, but
formally frowned on, if that makes sense. So a lot
of things in that sort of never gray world of
policing were happening. And in those days as well, Queensland
(09:56):
Police had a It wasn't widespread, but it was enough
pretty severe corruption of cops. So you know, there were
cops who were selling drugs, there were cops who were
taking bribes. There were cops who were protecting criminal gangs
in prostitution and organized crime and so on, and some.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Of them were in the drug squad as well.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
So not only were you working undercover with no no
backup or support, you had to be bloody careful who
you spoke to, who you trusted. So it was a
whole whole different environment and I never realized how tricky
it was until many years later when I just sat
back and started analyzing, you know, what we did and
(10:39):
how it all worked out, and it you know, undercover.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Like I say, I do.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I do a lot of keynote speaking now on mental
health and metal fitness and so on, and part of
my presentation is talking.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
About those days.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And I don't know whether you ever heard of an
eighties television show called Miami Wece. It was, you know,
the good looking guys with the.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Sea's ferraris and stuff, And.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
People often asked me what it was like to work undercover,
and I said, well, I'll tell you what it wasn't like.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
It wasn't like that. You know, it's a hat.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
There was no surveillance on us, there were no back
It's not like the movies. We would just buy ourselves
the majority of the time and just operating on our wits.
And once I learned how to speak drug talk like
drug talk, once I learned how to speak about drug dealing,
and I could talk about the weights I was buying
in a profit margin I was going to make and
(11:36):
all of that. I became pretty good at it, and
so hence I bought a lot of heroin open probably
the next eighteen months of my undercover.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
World far out like what what was the I guess
the split off of cops in that position that crossed
to the dark side.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah, I had a couple of mates who he went
to jail and god cross to the dark side, not
for corruption. But Harry, the guy I mentioned, had a
heroin addiction. He started using heroin because he had to,
and a lot of us have addictive personalities, and once
he started injecting that shit, he just quickly became addicted
(12:23):
to it, and he continued to be given heroin for
the rest of his undercover career by particular corrupt police
because it suited their purposes to have an undercover who
could walk into a drug deal and shoot up. It
was horrible. And one of the other guys went to
jail a few years later because he developed a psychological
(12:45):
addiction to weed. And I'm a big one for drug reform,
and that's maybe another conversation we'll have, But he was
in a situation where he just needed a smoke pot
every day to cope, and consequence of his undercover role
as Harry's heroin addiction was And my mate just stupidly
took a four hundred dollars kickback from a crook who
(13:09):
he agreed not to prosecute for an assault. And what
he didn't realize.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Is the crook had rolled over was working for the
misconduct misconduct commissioning.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
So my mate was charged with official coruption and went
to joh for two years. But you know the rest
of us, you know, crossing to the dark side didn't happen.
Certainly didn't happen for me. I smoked way too much
pot and broke some rules, but I never I never
acted corruptly or and neither did the other.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Guys that we worked with.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
We just had a completely different change of life style
and attitude from being normal cops.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And it was bloody hard to go back to being
a normal cop after all of that.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
So we were all touched by it, all changed by it,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
What were the differences, like, what was what changed in you?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
From a enom well I did two years undercover. I
was twenty the ripe old age of twenty four when
I came back to normal uniform work. A kid, yeah child,
Yeah okay. I was rebellious, I was cynical. I was jaded.
I was hyper vigilant. I did not trust anybody outside
my immediate circle. I couldn't form long lasting relationships for
(14:23):
a while because I just couldn't be emotionally available. I
still smoked pot when I could get my hands on it,
because I preferred smoking a joint to drinking. So I
had a real attitude about drug use, broke a lot
of rules, you know, just just a completely changed person.
(14:43):
And I've often reflected on it. Had I not worked undercover,
I would have been a black and white cop, as in,
you're either a bad guy or a good guy. And
I don't want to see anything in between, etc. Which
I don't think policing is all about.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So on a.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Positive side, when I came out of undercover, I had
a real change of attitude and looked at like through
a different lens. So there's no black and white, it's
all just shades of gray. So I found I was
able to talk to people more on their low offenders,
more on their level.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
I was more.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Empathetic, I reckon. I was still a tough cop. I
went from that back into criminal investigation as a young detective,
and I dealt with my feasure of pretty tough bad offenders.
But I just had a different view of the world,
and I think a better view of the world than
I would have if I hadn't lived in the world
(15:43):
masquerading as a drug dealer, you know, and just getting
to see the other side of the coin, as it were.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
It really blurs the lines, doesn't it. When you when
you're thrown in there and you've got to pave your
own way, make your own decisions, decisions that really don't
live on the same side as the law that you're
working to represent.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Like wow, but that was Yeah, Look, working undercover, you have
to live by your wits. So you know a lot
of risks in there. And the main risk was for me,
probably two being recognized by people. And it happened to
me a couple of times. So I was recognized in
some pretty tricky situations by people I've.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Gone to school.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
You called me by my right name, not my assumed name.
That takes a bit of talking to get out of that.
The other thing was the fear of getting ripped off. Yeah,
so sure you're worried about being exposed as a cop,
but it'd take a pretty brave guy to murder an
undercover cop because you just you draw the crabs.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
As we used to say, you know, yeah, you just
run too much risk.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
But if people thought I was another drug dealer, a
rival drug dealer, they have no hesitation in cutting the throat,
ripping me off, stealing my money, still in my drugs.
So you've developed this, like I said before, hypervigilance, which
is a sign of postmat express for it, and so
hyper vigilant.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
All the time.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
And the other thing was when I'll speak from a
personal experience, but the other undercovers have told me the
same thing. When I went back to normal policing, not
a lot of cops trusted me for a while because
their attitude was, well, you've been lying for a living
for the last two years. Why the fuck could we
trust you with what we're doing as in legitimate policing.
(17:36):
Why would we trust that you're one of us? Why
would we trust that you're not still one of them?
So all of that identity crisis was happening in addition
to no reintegration process. I sound like I'm winging, but
I have to say working undercover was fucking rush and
it was something that you can never really duplicate anywhere else.
(18:00):
An adrenaline. Adrenaline and fear of blood brothers. Yeah, one
feeds the other, and it's just it's something that's really
difficult to give up.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
So what's it like to hold empathy or cultivate empathy
or have empathy when you're you're trained in an environment
that is hyper vigilant all the time? Because can those
(18:34):
two things even coexist?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
For me?
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Yeah, And when I say I came out, I was
more apathetic. I would interview some pretty hard crooks, robbers, safebreakers,
professional cooks, I call them, and I'd want to know
about their childhood. I don't want to know how they
felt about things, so I could empathize. I didn't sympathize,
but I could empathize, and in that way, quite syneekly,
(18:59):
I could have them confessed to me certain things they've done.
So the ultimate aim of an interview is to either
get a confession or to have a response. That people
will lie to you and then you can disprove those lives.
So it's about getting communication happening. And I just found that,
you know, I was I was genuinely interested in crooks
(19:22):
because I wanted to try and.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Figure out how they got that way.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
If I hadn't worked undercover, they hadn't stood side by
side with heroin dealers and had some interesting guys and
had beers with them, I wouldn't have given a rats
about offenders. So so that's that's that worked for me
and the heart of vigilance. It just became part of
my life. You know, even these days, I still find
(19:46):
myself checking mirrors for surveillance and driving like you know,
someone's following me around. It's not a bad not a
bad habit in Melbourne, believe me. Given all the carjacking
and ship we've got happened about here.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
M M.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
So it's all making sense. I'm just you know, I'm
trying to verbalize as best I can. But that was
only two years of my career. So when I finished
UC work, I again, as I said, I had this
thirst for adrenaline, and I had this thirst for adventure,
and I always wanted to be anyway when I was
in the academy anyway, I wanted to be at the
(20:23):
sharp end of policing, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
I wanted to be where the action was. So I
saw a squad of.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Operators on the news one night. We were at a
high risk and it was an eskrped job on the
Gold Coast, and these guys jumped out of a truck
with semi automatic rifles and black jumpsuits and bulletproof vests.
And I thought, oh, I've got to get some of that.
So that's exactly what I did. Yeah, I volunteered, applied
(20:50):
for that, was interviewed, and was accepted into that squad.
Worked in that part time. It was part time in
those days. There seams are all full time around the
country now, but we trained four days a week on
an army base, learned weaponry, tactics, fire and movement all
of that stuff. And then I was approached to be
(21:12):
one of the first full time members of the tactical
team in Queen's Land in nineteen eighty seven. So that
was the next you know, like big adventurous thing that
I could do in the cops. There are cops tiff
that you know, they go to work and they spend
forty years doing normal police work. Love them there, that's great,
good on them. There are cops who love to write
(21:32):
traffic tickets. Not such a big fan of them, but
you know, whatever they choose to do, they choose to do.
But I never wanted to be one of them. And
a lot of my friends were the same, particularly its undercovers.
We all sort of gravitated to you know, sharp end
policing as it were.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, and in that tactical team, what are some of
the memorable jobs and what was your first big job?
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Like, oh, god, the first first siege I winned domestic siege.
This guy had a high powered rifle because back in
those days, you could go to kmart or any sports
for him by pretty much any high powered semi automatic
rifle you wanted without a yeah, without a driver's license,
without anything it was just you know, pre Port Arthur,
(22:17):
everybody had a gun.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Oh my god, that's just don't even seemed like the
same lifetime, does it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Yeah, and I'm really pleased to hear that because you
haven't grown up in that environment.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
And I'm from Tazzy, so yeah, I think there's a
lot of guns still buried in Tavy when all that happened.
But yeah, domestic siege. This guy, I can't remember what
the issue was, but he was firing shots and were
surrounded it. We eventually crashed down the door and went
in and grabbed him and you know, no shots were
five thank god. So we had hundreds of jobs like
(22:50):
that where either domestic siege is or high risk raids
you know, where the offender was armed, and we'd make
certain plans of either vehicle intercepts or house assaults, etc.
And go in and grab them. But the big job
that affected me badly it was July twenty nine, eighty seven.
(23:12):
We were tasked to raid a house in Virginia and Brisbane.
That was the house of Australia's number two most wanted
I think, and Queensland's number one most wanted.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
There was a violent.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Arm robber and an escape from long Band Sydney in
a nutshell. It was the same week that our corruption
inquiry our Royal Commission in to coruption had started in
Queensland and the headlines weren't very good. Our commissioner eventually
went to jail for twelve years, I think for corruption.
The premiere was ours to the government was our, so
(23:46):
it was just a high time. But we were instructed
to do this raid on the Wednesday morning, in the
early hours before the final newspapers were printed. This is
how cynical I am about many things. I'm convinced this
was the case that our bosses, not my immediate bosses,
(24:06):
but they're those in charge of policing, wanted us to
go in and execute a warrant to get a headline
to know number one most wanted captured to take attention
away from the bad headlines that were coming out about
the corruption inquiry. The problem was they didn't allow us
to use the tear gas that I wanted to use
(24:29):
in the distraction, flash bangs that I wanted to use,
et cetera, and our ballistic vests were went up to
scratch because of budget. When we went into the house
the guy opened up on us and killed one of
my team members badly, worunted another, and two of us
shot and killed him.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And what really fucked me for god, at least.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
At least probably twenty eight years, I would think, was
post amatic stress disorder and survivor guilt because Pete, who
was killed, who was murdered, was a good friend, and
that just that just shook my whole world. So that
(25:14):
was that was a life changing event. And you know,
if I thought I was cynical and jaded before, after
that happened, I went through a whole raft of what
I didn't know was PDSD. The term hadn't been invented
in the eighties. You know, I was shocked, I was grief,
I was numb, I was I had flashbacks nightmare's anger
(25:38):
and put a gun in my mouth probably five weeks
after the job, because I was sitting at home and
just drank most of a bottle of scotch. I did
that most nights to try to sleep, and put a
gun in my mouth and thought about squeezing the trigger
and all of that was incredibly life altering, of course,
(26:00):
but in those days, there was no there was no
medical health sorry, mental health or trauma support, which wasn't
heard of the you know, the answer to grief in
those days. And most cops saw ship during their ship
that nice people should never see. The answer to handling
grief and trauma and shop was to get pissed. So
(26:23):
the drinking culture was a huge part of policing. So
I spent god, I spent years you know doing that,
just drinking to numb everything. And then I stayed in
the tactical team for another two years, I think. But
the problem was see getting on my life story now
(26:43):
too without having to ask questions how good is this?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Is great?
Speaker 4 (26:49):
The problem was I became quite homicidal is the wrong word.
But I volunteered and I wanted to be on every
single operation I could be on that had the henshall
to shoot someone Yeah, because it again doesn't take a
shrink to figure it out. I want a pure revenge
for the death of the murder of my mate. And
(27:10):
I realized in one particular operation where it was a
siege again a guy had held his mother hostage and
he'd fired thirty odd shots at the police and set
a police car and fire and so on, and we're
about to go in and get him. And I just
turned to my officerde and so I'm going to kill
this tree, you know, And I'd never spoken like that before.
(27:36):
And he was shot. Thankfully he survived. But I woke
up the next morning and thought my dark side as
well and truly taking over. It's sort of like Lord
Byron got heard of Lord Byron the poet. His wife
classified him as mad, bad and dangerous to know. And
I was just turning into a dark, dark human being,
(27:57):
and I thought, I've got to leave this this area
held out of it before it takes Tailor.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Two, how do you like, did you speak to someone
about that? How do you recognize that? And then how
do you take a step or towards something.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
There was no one to speak to, you know. The
culture well in the tactical world, and it's certainly changed
now because special operations people around the country. Every taxic
team has a different name, but its special Special Emergency
Response Team in Queensland. Every time there's a shooting and
(28:34):
life is lost, there's there's counseling, there's follow up as assessment,
there's support and the research shows all over the world
that the earlier intervention can happen in a traumatic situation,
the quicker or the less chance of any disorder of
pastraumatic express disorder developing is we had nothing, so there
(28:57):
was no one to talk to. I would certainly not
have said that to anybody or verbalized it, because I
would have been taken off team immediately, and rightly so.
But I didn't want to lose that identity. That was
my purpose and identity, and.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
I loved it.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
I loved the work, but I knew if I stayed
there I would probably end up shooting someone outside justification
and facing the consequences. So you know, I was just
just so full of vengeance, and because to explain that
that sounds a bit cold bladder, but to explain that better.
(29:31):
Before Pete was murdered, we had hundreds of jobs where
people are armed, and we'd always give them chance after
chance after chance after chance to put the fire um down.
I decided, after he was shot in front of me,
that was never going to happen again, and every time
there was someone with a firearm, he was going to
go down. Yeah, so we did. We did engage in
(29:52):
a few firefights after that, but I just I could
see myself being in a situation where if someth I
knew someone had a firearm before they even raised it,
I was going to drop them. And that's just completely wrong.
So I knew my shortcomings. I knew that that was
a potential. So I just went to my boss and said, look,
I think it's time I moved on. And I left
(30:15):
that and went back into the world of covert surveillance
and intelligence gathering. So complete change of work, but you know,
I still had the whole still had the whole psychological
shit just bubbling under the surface, because again, there was
no recognition of pastmat express disorder. We didn't know what
the hell it was. I actually thought it was just
(30:38):
me for a long time until I started meeting or
associating with people who were struggling in a similar way.
I did a bit of research in the US. I
was doing an undergrad Bachelor of Arts and Policing degree
and I was at the library researching something, and I
came across some police journals and started reading about this
(31:00):
this guy and I think it was California, Orange County maybe,
who had these symptoms. And they were excessive drinking, sleeplessness, nightmares, flashbacks,
short term anger, promiscuity, and one other. I think I
remember eating this, going holy shit, this must be a thing,
(31:22):
you know, And a lot of it was self realization.
But I still wasn't brave enough to go and talk
to a psych.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Didn't even know what folks were, to be honest.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And the only thing I did do was go to
my doctor and just said, you know, I was sitting
outside because I just burned out. And I said, I
remember thinking, what do I say to him? Should I
say I've got a lot of anger? Should I say,
you know, thinking about chilling a lot of people?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Or whatever?
Speaker 4 (31:49):
It was just to exaggerate slightly, but I remember he
just opened the door and walked and he said, how
are you Keith? And I burst in tears and I
couldn't stop crying for ten And yeah, just all of
that that trauma and sab me some time off, et cetera.
But that was about all I did, and I just
(32:11):
kept on working. So cost me my first marriage. I
married a lovely, lovely woman who I woke up one
morning and just couldn't be there anymore, such and such
a state of darkness and depression and joylessness and hopelessness,
and I just said, I just can't be married anymoreally
(32:33):
forever ever have remorse about that. And I slept in
my office for three nights, no plan, until one of
my teammates said, you know, what the hell are you doing?
And she said, look, I've got a spare room at
my place. Is come and share the rent, moving until
you can sort yourself out. So all of that was,
you know, in hindsight, I'm able to talk about this
(32:56):
quite openly now, but it took me a long time
to get here, and it was just a horrible dark
time of life.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
And then I did some other stuff and some other
interesting stuff and almost got blown to bits on by
a guy in a siege on a Saturday afternoon. Had
a box full ofgelic light and the hand grenade and
a rifle, and I turned up to in any Unit's called,
et cetera at Brisbane. I was running an undercover operation
(33:25):
at the time, but you know, heard the any Unit
shots fired and raced to the job as any cop
would do. And I ran up the stairs of this
this building in the center of the city and found
myself face to face with the offender. Put my gun
down and went in and spoke with him for whatever reason,
and I spent hour and a half talking to him
(33:48):
and talking him out of killing us both and blowing
up the building. And you know, and and I was
I've often reflected on whether I don't think I had
a death wish, but I certainly felt that that need
to resolve this because no one else was doing it.
(34:08):
It wasn't my job. I'm not a trained negotiator. I
just went in there and sat with him and thought,
fuck this, I'm going to sort this shit out. Level
of arrogance, I suppose, and maybe you know my shrink
and I talk about this a bit. It was potentially
me trying to prove to myself that I was more
worthwhile than what I thought I was. Who the hell
who knows why we do things? And then yeah, that
(34:31):
was all resolved, thankfully, And then I was just more
broken than I realized. I ended up resigning from policing
and moving into the corporate world twenty years after I started.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
So, you know what, I think, as you're telling this,
it really highlights to me that how what a vulnerable
state it is for anyone.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
To be.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
In the middle of understanding what am I in the
middle of and finding out what that is, because what you,
who you speak to and how you approach that conversation
dictates where it can go. Like mental health, I mean,
especially back then. We know a lot more now, so
it's great we have the ability to learn to know
(35:21):
some learn from people who have been through it, see
some of the cues and some of the things that
start to happen, and put too and two together. But
I mean, I guess for you, it's like how you
approach that situation with and with whom dictates any number
of answers in inverted commas that you might have been
given and perceptions you would to walk away with about
(35:45):
what's going on.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, Look I carried it for years. I
left police thing, I went into the corporate world. I
did an MBA, I worked in various senior spots and
so on. But I was near happy. I was never settled.
I remarried and we had two beautiful girls who were
now twenty nine and twenty seven. But I was still
(36:09):
just in this whole state of flux. I guess. So
I went from job to job. You know, I'd be
quite SENI quite well paid. But if I wasn't a
job for two years and people kissed me off, I'd go,
well that fuck you, Jack, I'm out of here and
I've moved to something else, which is which is one.
You know, I understand what it is now. But in
those days, I just thought, you know, I thought the anger.
(36:32):
I thought I was just an angry man, you know.
I thought that was just part of my personality makeup.
I thought the you know, the the short tempered, of
the angry, short tempered, but the lack of patience with people.
I thought, oh, it was just must be me, just
must be part of you know, growing older or something
all those and and it wasn't until I was sorry
(36:54):
I had. Eleven years after left the police, I had
a major, major anxiety attack for no reason, just no
catalyst at all, just crushed me. And the friend of
mine who'd recruited me out of policing into the corporate world,
happened to in me stam ut here going and start
think I'm fucked, you know, And he went right where.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I stayed there and drove straight over from the other side.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Of Melbourne, and on the way he'd already made an
appointment with a counselor that he'd been seeing because he'd
been God his life, he'd been shot and badly wounded
as a cop as well, and he'd gone through his
own trauma. But he came and calmed me down and
just said, right, I've made an appointment, and if I
have to grab you by the throat and take you.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
There, you're going.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
And I remember saying to him, I don't need to
see any counselor. That's you know, that's bullshit. Anyway, that embarked.
That was my first session exposure to counseling, which I
found was quite liberating. But you know, I didn't think
I had an issue. I was in denial for quite
(37:57):
some time.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
And I saw her for a while.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
That I didn't, and I saw somewhere else and I didn't,
and I saw someone else and I didn't. And I
was sort of going from counselor to counselor because I
just wasn't two things. I wasn't accepting that I had
a mental disorder, because you know, that's quite confronting for
an alpha male to go. I think I'm a bit
fucking nuts. And so yeah, I did that for the
(38:24):
years and I finally and I love this story because
you know, it changed my life. I was working as
a deputy director of a membership association. And I was
in the city meeting with government training people. So we
had we had a register training organization. Anyway, I'm sitting
at this meeting, you know, board sitting with public servants,
going oh god, when did the size of trolls come out?
(38:46):
And I chatting to this guy beside me who worked
for the government, and I just thought, there's something about
him that's a bit different. It's, you know, not your
normal public servant. So we had the copy break or whatever,
and I said, oh, you know, what's your background in
his I was in the army and I said, oh,
whereabouts and said the SAS And I said, iew people
in the sas and As. I ask every veteran, how's things.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Going for you?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
How are you, you know, after Afghanistan? And he said
he said, look, I have some challenging times at most
of all, you know, for most of it, I'm pretty good.
He led through his fishing around his wallet and pulled
out a business card and gave it to me and said,
I think you might need to give this woman a call.
And I said really, And I looked at the card
and that was psychiatrists, And I said, does it show
(39:31):
that much and he said, mate, it's written all over
your face.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
God.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
So like you just said, you can see ques, you
can pick up behaviors, et cetera. And so I made
an appointment with her and went to speak with her,
speak with her, went to a session, and after the
first hour his defense is always sorry. Comedy has always
been my defense mechanism. And I said, so, Doc, what
do you reckon? You know, nuts, just played nuts? And
(39:57):
she said, you have chronic pds the anxiety and most
likely depression. And I went shit because I'd always thought
that I knew what PDSD was by then, but I
always thought that the people who had done really dangerous stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I says the guy, Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Know, Yeah, how deluded was I?
Speaker 4 (40:20):
And that's the thing, tip, you know, I know, I
just looked at what I did as being a cop,
and on reflection, I've got metals for valor and bravery
and shit and and on reflection I've looked at it
and gone, wow, what the hell was I thinking? Because
I've seen my friend murdered, almost got blown up by
a homicidal Vietnam veteran. I've been working undercovered all that stuff.
(40:44):
And that's when I said to her, well, that actually
makes me feel great. And I remember she looked at
me and said, I love strengths. They always answer what
you say with the question and why do you say that?
And I said, because I now know I haven't been
imagining it or exaggerating it or inventing it. So let's
(41:04):
let's figure out how we fix this stuff. Yeah. And
that really that was a watershed moment because I thought, Okay,
I've got it. I'm not just an angry guy. I'm
not just emotionally distant through personality. I've got a brain injury,
which is trauma.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yea.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
And we work through a lot, and.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
I've done a lot of research and reading and self
assessment and and I'm happy to say that, you know,
I'm pretty much on the other side of it. You
never completely get over postmat express. That's the bad news.
The good news is your life can become incredibly richer,
incredibly and happier, you know. So it's so hence that's
(41:45):
why I talk about it so much. You know, you know,
anybody who listens to these podcasts or these media interviews
that I do with people like you, if there's this
one person out there who listens to this and goes, fuck,
what this guy's saying is like resonates with because that's
what I'm thinking. And if they understand they're not alone,
that has a major major impact on how they then
(42:09):
start to seek treatment or help, or open up or
converse or you know, realize that there's a way out.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Well, I'm interested when you were going to see the
number of psychologists that you did, when you still were
in that kind of denial phase. What was your what
did you what were you seeking? What were you looking
to overcome? What was the answer you were looking for.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I didn't know what I was looking for, but I
was looking for an answer, if that makes sense. You know,
I knew that there was something wrong with me, and
I wanted to try to find someone who could help
me understand what the hell it was the problem is.
And I'm probably an old cliche, but I use it
finding the right count stores like speed dating, you know, yep, yep,
(43:01):
nut Oh maybe nah, you know. So for me, it
was about getting the right relationship and the right level
of trust. You know, opening yourself up and being vulnerable
is the key, I think to recovery and resilience, of course,
but to have that to find that relationship and be
(43:21):
able to be completely honest. I just couldn't find anybody
until I met this woman who just don't know. I
don't know what she does. I don't know how she
did it, but she just supported and helped me understand
and work towards recovery much more effective than anyone else
I've ever met. And I don't know what a secret is.
(43:42):
I wish I did. I think it's just, you know,
it's like it's like any relationship you need to trust,
you need to absolutely trust. And she has said to
me a few times, what you say to me, I
don't judge you on And that's probably a major thing
as well, because I spent so many years judging myself
and going through the order, could have sugar order, what
(44:05):
if you know, et cetera, which is just pretty self
destructive because you can't change the past. Yeah, So you know,
it's it's enabled me to have these conversations now. And
I could never talk about that operation where Pete was
shot and killed without bursting and its ears. Couldn't do
it for years, And I understand now it's survivor guilt.
(44:26):
It's it's a combination of survivor guilt's a combination of
postmount express and you'd probably know the disorder happens when
the industry is to be your life for more than
six or eight weeks. You know, twenty five years is
probably a fairly good men.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Probably ticks the box keep probably probably just scrapes.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Yeah, scrapes and yeah, yeah, yeah. So this thought, this
is all your fault, this came across became a you
know what forty five minutes when you said, give me
a bit of your background.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, we've got a few more days to get through this.
I find it interesting like that. I find it to
be a common misconception when people first are introduced to
that idea of seeing a therapist or a counselor, that
it'll be a conversation like it's okay, I'll just go
and get the fixed, get the answer to fix the thing.
(45:14):
And as you were talking, it reminded me of I
think it was maybe my third counselor myself friend A
friend went to this counselor and recommended them. So I
went to see him and we had three sessions. So
I'm going there for childhood trauma, and I'm I've decided
I've googled it, right, I'm like, oh, this happened. Oh
this some of these attributes to my personality and these
(45:36):
things I find challenging in relationships and connection and stuff.
Some of this I think this is related. So I
go there and I'm like, okay, so this is this,
this and this fix me? And I remember three of
the third session in he goes so tiff Normally, by
the time I've had three sessions with somebody, I've got
a really strong sense of who they are and what
(45:59):
they need from me. And I'm like yep, and he goes,
I just don't get that from you. And We're just
sitting there staring at each other, and I was like,
I remember just thinking, well, fuck, you're the expert in
people's psychology, so if you don't have the answer of
how to fix me, which was still my like oh
(46:20):
you just fix it. I'll tell you what has happened,
and you just whatever you do in this magic fucking room,
you fix it. The poor bloke. Could she get a
more difficult client, you know?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
And that, yeah, you're right, you know, people, I don't
know what I expected. I expected that i'd go there
and maybe she'd give me steps one to ten. But
you know, as you know, it's like it's like a
Christmas present when you go, shit, I'm actually now putting
two and two together. Or she'd say to me, so
(46:54):
your childhood trauma and the way you interact in a relationship,
do you think there's a connection between this and that.
It became our running joke because I just go, fuck,
you've got me again. Why didn't I think of that?
And she just says, you don't because you're right in
the middle of it. You don't put two and two together.
That's what That's what a good counselor will do. They'll
(47:15):
go do you think this? Do you think that? And
you go, wow, you know, and that's that's such a
powerful thing to realize that. And so I'd be buzzing
after a session with her and be driving home going,
let me think about this. Okay, maybe there's something I'm
going to take a note of that I'm going to
(47:36):
talk for about that next time, because it's a combination.
So I think what a good counselor does is they
it's like a good coach. You know, a coach will
teach you how to box. The coach will teacher martial arts,
a coach will teach you how to swim or run.
They will give you They'll open up your ability to
self analyze and go. Right, this is what they're telling
(47:58):
me I can work on. Now here's a technique that
I hadn't thought about before that I'll put into my training,
you know what I mean. So I think that I
think that's your analogy. Is a good counselor can have
you start to just delve into things. And what she
has helped me understand is so in the tactical world,
(48:18):
in shooting ADF whatever, there's I think called the double tap.
And a double tap is two quick shots to the
chest or two quick shots to the head. And you know,
if you're really good at a double tap, and I
used to be, you can actually have the rounds like
just sit right beside each other. So I've got a
PDSD double tap my terminology and it's childhood trauma. And
(48:39):
I clearly developed post traumatic stress in my environment there
with her help, I've figured that out. And then the
trauma of the operation where Pete was killed. And then
combine that a bit with undercover. So I've got childhood
and cop double tap trauma. Yeah, and when I first
put all that shit together and spoke about that. She said, yeah,
(49:01):
you're right, you are absolutely great. And what she was
waiting for me to do was put the puzzle pieces together.
And when we put the puzzle pieces together, then we
talk about what underlies it. So like an onion with
many layers, that's where everybody has drawna and then you
figure out, Okay, what's going to work for me. So
(49:23):
for me, Holy Trinity, diet, sleep, exercise, and it's also
breath work and mindfulness and journaling. I'm not great at
I wrote two books, I probably journal way of them,
and on that writing those was an incredible capacity to
get a lot of stuff out there. But for me,
(49:44):
it's just that continual recovery for the rest of my
life now. But the big thing is I have so
much fucking happiness in my life and so much joy
that I didn't have for literally a couple of decades. Yeah,
I'm sort of back to being there that the older
version of the young guy, the young Banksy that was,
(50:06):
you know, full of life and people are going you know,
i'd walk into a room, I'd bounce into a room,
not walk into a room. You know, it's just full
of enthusiasm and a zest for light and that's come back,
you know, and I'm just so thankful that had the meeting.
Spoke to the guy a game of the business card.
Now there's sliding doors moments.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, yeah, it's so like it just sounds cliche, but
when I think of everything that's important to me in
my life and everything I love the most and cherish
the most, it comes from the hardship it happened, because
it's what drove it. So, you know, it's it's so
(50:46):
important to I guess peel back those layers of the
onion because we numb stuff, We numb things out. But
I remember that first, you know that first, that first
layer of self awareness was like, what's the point of
this shit? Life was blissful when I thought I was
just fucking you know.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
What do I do with this?
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Like?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
What good is self awareness if I can't just fix it?
And I felt really stuffed at first. It's like what
do I do with that? Now? I know all this
shit about me that once I thought was positive, now
it's actually an anchor? How do I shift that? But
what's beautiful is over time you do and I think
when I finally got the fucking memo on therapy and
(51:32):
figured out that it was the relationship for the work.
It was understanding going when I thought there was nothing
to talk about and life was good, that's when I
learned the most. Or you think you're not changing, and
then they go, hang on a minute to say that again,
and they're like, would old you have said that? You're like, oh, actually,
you're right, I have changed, you know, and we don't
give ourselves that credit.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
Yeah, yeah, spot on.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
It's funny because I felt exactly the same. I'd go
to sessions to come up there's nothing to talk about today,
and then ye six five minslas she's going, well it's awful,
and I've gone, fuck, where did that come from?
Speaker 3 (52:08):
You know?
Speaker 4 (52:09):
And and you're right, it's fake. You know, when you
first go through it, you go fuck.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
I thought it was okay.
Speaker 4 (52:14):
But I look back now on what I was like,
and I'm just like my emotions now to if I
cry at the drop of a hat, i see a
sad movie, I'm a bloody met whereas years ago I
just subjugated all of that. For me, that was the
sign of weakness. I was programmed to be the protector,
the father, the provider, the husband, all of that socialization
(52:38):
that we have no idea that we're subcept to, but
it's sitting there anyway, you know. And once you start
to unpeel all of that and realize that it's programming,
you can allow yourself to be you, you know, and
I'm you know people not everyone likes me, and that's
just the way of the world. For so many years,
(53:00):
I wanted to be liked by everyone, and that goes
back to childhood of course, you know, being in a
domestic abuse situation, getting bashed and so on. So I
wanted to have everyone liked me, and I wanted to
be perfect at everything, and just realized that's a fucking
that's impossible, idiot.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
So you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
And what so resilience there's a great Japanese term, or
a great.
Speaker 3 (53:27):
Martial arts term, sorry because I studied.
Speaker 4 (53:28):
Oka now and karate, which is fall down seven times,
stand up eight and you would have heard that before,
but that that's resilience. People who are resilient are those
who have scars. You're not born with resilience. It's ship
that you go through in life and you survive it
and you learn from it. And you get tougher.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
That's resilience.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
There's ways to build it, of course, you know you.
Dan Pronk writes beautifully about it in the Resilience Shield,
and there are ways to do it and develop it.
But people need to understand that life can be pretty
shit and when you survive those obstacles, that's when you learn.
As long as you learn from them and you don't
(54:12):
let them overwhelm you, that's the key.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
I reckon, Yeah, what's your what's your favorite message to deliver?
Like when you're giving a keynote, what's the one thing
you want that you feel that you give to people
that can help them change.
Speaker 4 (54:31):
Ah, there's probably the main thing is to be authentic
in how you see yourself. Be authentic and how you
deal with others and just let yourself be vulnerable. You know,
I say to people and there are always people in
the room who are struggling, and they don't admit it.
They admit it later, and I say, look, you know,
(54:53):
if you're going through any of the shit that I
went through, and I talk about all the symptoms I had,
but then the ongoing you know, the joylessness and emotional
distance and so on. But if you're going through any
of these, find someone that you trust and say, hey,
you've got five minutes and start the conversation. If you
(55:13):
are the person that someone comes to, give them more
than five minutes and shut the fuck up. Don't try
and solve their problems, because all we want to do
is just have someone sit down and the dirt with
us and listen to our stuff. Yeah, and be there
for us. And I think that's you know, that's the
main message I'll give to people is if you're struggling,
(55:36):
find someone you trust, find someone in your tribe, find
someone you know that you can that you can just
talk to and do it again.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
You know.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
I love the whole concept of value. Okay, day, but
one day a year and close question. Okay, yep, yep,
I'm fine, I'll see you next year. You know, it's
just that's the concept is great, the.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Delivery is bullshit. You know.
Speaker 4 (56:02):
I'm more about if you're talking to someone and you
see someone struggling and we just go, hey, you know,
let's have a coffee. How's the world going for you to?
How's things? Yeah, you know, and just see if that
can elicit a response.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Never doesn't. Don't give up we need.
Speaker 4 (56:19):
We just need to This is your fault. You asked
me a question again. We just need to be understanding
that that life is a struggle. The bookis Do It
Beautifully the Buddhis talk about life is fucking home. Life
is to struggle, and it is and it is a struggle,
and it's our it's our it's our duty as human
(56:41):
beings to look after each other as best we can,
because God knows you might be on the receiving end
of it one day.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
M the you reminded me of Ray Bonnie, who I've
had on the show before. She asks the question what's
it like being you today? I like that, Yeah, which
is her conversation starter around me, and she does a
lot in men's mental health, herself and mazing stuff. But yeah,
you're fascinating to speak to. I dare say I might
(57:10):
have to knock on your door again. I feel like
there's more conversation left in us. But for now, tell
my listeners where they can find your books and access
you and reach out and anything wrong here.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
Thanks Steff. Firstly, I'd love to do that because you know,
I've got a real sense of comfort with you, and
I think we've got a lot of shared stuff that we.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
Can go through.
Speaker 4 (57:30):
So I'm an INSTA B A n K S y
one seven five So Banks you want.
Speaker 2 (57:36):
So everyone's allowed to call you banks? Is that was
all bloody rubbish at the start, as long.
Speaker 4 (57:41):
As there're the one seven five after it. So that's
very funny. So Banks you one seven five on Instagram.
I've got a website Keith banks k E I T
H B A n K S dot com dot Au.
I put seconds of thought into that and on that,
(58:04):
you know, on that website, yeah, that's where my books.
You can buy books from me personally, and I love
to personally inscribe them and each message is different. Or
they're on Amazon book Topia. Most bookstores still have them,
I think. And for those people who don't like reading,
they're on Audible and they're they're voiced by an Australian actor,
(58:24):
Joel Jackson, who's a good friend of mine. Is a
great guy and he's done a great job. So but yeah,
it's again just to put it out there. This isn't
a shameless marketing club because published authors don't get a
lot of money. You know, you don't write books for money? Yeah, yeah,
you know, I wrote them for the message, and I
love the fact that there are lots of people who
(58:44):
read them and contact me to say they've never had
anything to do with cops before, and it's changed their
attitude about policing, which is great.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Love that.
Speaker 4 (58:55):
But yeah, we've we've been waffling on for a while. Tip,
you know, thank you for letting me speak so much.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
No, you're so welcome. I've really enjoyed this so thanks
so much, and we will I will have you back.
So everyone go buy a few books and that's your
Christmas sorded. You've got e Run's Christmas presents now so
perfect perfect, see you mate, see everyone.
Speaker 3 (59:18):
Thanks to you, she.
Speaker 1 (59:21):
Said, it's now never. I got fighting in my blood,
got it.
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