Online FrankTALK with Keith Banks

“I was happy for the first six years of my life, when I lived with my mother and grandparents in the tiny farming town of Tambo, on the banks of the Barcoo River. If nothing had changed I might be living in Brisbane now, working as a lawyer or in social services. I would go to work in the morning, come home at night, and I never would have killed anyone.”

This is the story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland’s most decorated police officers, who served in the Queensland Police Force from 1975 – 1995. From an early age, a childhood of domestic violence, an overwhelming sense of helplessness and a disruptive life in the ‘tightly wound spring’ of a caravan led to a version of Keith that would remain with him forever: a man determined to protect the vulnerable.

From the rigorous training and structured authority of the Academy, Keith chased the adrenaline of street policing at the specialist Brisbane Mobile Patrols before volunteering for some of the most dangerous work of all: to go undercover, in the most corrupt era of Queensland’s police history.

In the 1980s, with no surveillance, training, or background intelligence—and almost always with no partner—Keith infiltrated the drug scene as an undercover operative, changing his name, backstory and physical appearance to blend into the late-night drug scene. He smoked pot, drank with targets, and became someone they could trust … before slamming them in a buy-bust.

As the months went on, the line between operative and offender became blurred, and Keith’s identity as a police officer was compromised in more ways than one. Drugs, Guns & Lies is a moving, confronting and utterly compelling story of all the undercover cops who became casualties of that era… when not everyone with a badge could be trusted.

Please join us for this FrankTALK with Keith Banks on Thursday 8 October at 6pm via Zoom. Bookings are essential.

Drugs, Guns & Lies is available to borrow with you Frankston City Libraries membership on our digital library apps: https://bit.ly/3iC4YzB or reserve it now for contactless Click and Collect.