Mr. Orange: Get out of the f---ing car! Neil Woods: No wonder he
got shot, to be honest. Mind you, he showed out, didn't he? Golden rule. I'm Neil Woods. I'm a former undercover police officer, now a board member of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and I'm here today to look at some undercover scenes in movies. Brian: Yeah, this is
Officer Brian O'Connor. I'm off-duty MAPD. Neil: The ethics of undercover
policing is actually quite straightforward, because
you remain a police officer. So your first duty is to preserve life. He had no other option there, really. A police officer's duty
always remains the same. Brian: I got one trauma victim, about 24 years of age, 6 foot, maybe 200 pounds. Neil: It's actually quite nice detail in the verbals that he was using to make it clear that his knowledge of the situation, the trauma to the body,
the medical information, was gonna make a real difference to the likelihood of his survival. So, actually, quite
nicely scripted, really. But there was a situation where
I was in an isolated place with three problematic heroin users, one of which was yellow with,
suffering from hepatitis C, and I found out just before he injected that he'd been in police
custody and had no tolerance, and then another one, it was
only two filters between them, and so he injected without
a filter into his groin. You know, the chances of
him having an embolism as a result of that very
risky injecting behavior. Some vulnerable people really
putting themselves at risk. It was quite a frightening situation. Dwight: We have never met each other. We are complete strangers. Also, we're gonna need a signal to bolt out of there in
case there is danger, and that signal is lick your lips. Try it. No, no, no. Like this. Neil: Well, never have
signals is what I would say, but when I have worked on a job, very early on I worked with a drug squad, and I've been meeting this guy, who was just wanting to see the money, and I said to the squad, "There's no way is there gonna be any drugs. There's gonna be no drugs." And he said, "Well, we'll have a signal just in case the drugs are there," of me putting my arm on top of the car. Only when we got in the car did I remember that that's what he did all the time, and so all the drug squad all ran in, arrested the guy, and there was no drugs. So signals can always go wrong. Holdaway: To do this job,
you gotta be a great actor. You gotta be naturalistic; you gotta be naturalistic as h---. Neil: You are not an actor. You have to play a different
version of yourself, but if you're there with the
same people day in, day out, you can't maintain an act because it becomes fragile. It is a good thing to
have anecdotes ready. You do; you need anecdotes of the time when you ran away from that security guard when he caught you shoplifting. The person you tripped over, what happened when you fell over. But you can't rehearse
them from a piece of paper; they gotta be yours. They gotta be your storytelling from your imagination, and they've got to be
from your own personality. Freddy: You're not gonna get hurt. You're f---ing Beretta. They
believe every f---ing word 'cause you're supercool. Neil: Let's say I was
pairing up with someone, working with another undercover cop. If I saw them do that in the mirror, it would not fill me full
of confidence at all. If you need that reassurance, perhaps you're not where you need to be. Mr. Orange: Hold it, hold it! Right there. Get out of the f---ing car. Neil: No wonder he got shot, to be honest. Mind you, he showed out, didn't he? Golden rule. Neil: That level of
corruption, where there is a spy from one camp in the other camp, people assume that that's unusual, but it's not. I was on an undercover operation, trying to infiltrate just
the periphery of a cartel, but that cartel had a spy right at the heart of my camp. One of my backup team was replaced four and a half months into the operation with someone that I shook the hand of, and 12 months later, it
turned out that that person, he'd been paid to join the police. As in, just like "The Departed." The time I met him, he'd been
in the police for seven years. Phone operator: Wait,
there's still one phone up. George: Where? [phone vibrates] Neil: The handler is sat
next to the covert team and actually receiving
messages from the undercover while they're there. That's a no-no. You have to have a complete separation from any covert investigating team. But, yeah, I would've had a mobile phone, and sometimes two mobile phones, 'cause one would have been
an electronic open mic and the other phone would
be a normal, operating phone that would have all different names in that would relate to different people I could talk about in my legend. Because if your gangster friends, then see you with a phone and they think, "I'm gonna check your phone," and they see that you sent
a message at that time, or to even send a message
at that time is ludicrous. He picked up on the
hostility and the suspicion. The moment he did that, they picked up on their body
language, subtle as it was. You have to be sensitive to colloquialism, but in my experience, if
someone is suspicious of you, they will challenge it instantly. Tony: What's his occupation? Mary: Fisherman. Tony: Where were you born? Mary: Halifax, Nova Scotia. Tony: What's your date of birth? Mary: February 21, 1952. Neil: Yeah, it's interesting, this. Whenever you're working undercover, you have to have your cover story, you have to have your legend, but in domestic undercover work, the legend that you build is more about where you've been, the experiences you've had,
the people that you know. So, for example, if I
was working undercover and I say to someone that
I used to go drinking in The Nags Head in Lincoln, I would need to know
the name of the person who worked the bar on a Wednesday. Tony: What's your middle name? Tony: What's your middle name?
Joe: Leon? Tony: Shoot him. He's an American spy. Neil: A bit harsh. Undercover work is a confidence trick. You don't go into it unless you know exactly who you
are and for that role, and I don't need anyone
testing me for that, because testing suggests there's some kind of vulnerability there, and you've got to feel invulnerable. Martin: Hey. Gangster: Good, huh? Tasty, smooth? Martin: Now, let me say I, I take the whole stash
off your hands for free, and you a--holes can go to jail, what do you say about that? Neil: Yeah, [laughs] OK. Yeah, that's a good way of trying to get you killed, I suppose. There's an arrogance with him that wouldn't really fit
with undercover work. You are completely separate
from normal police work. You don't have your
warrant card or your badge or anything like that on you. You are, for all intents and purposes, pretending to be someone else, and you would be highly at risk if you did have anything on you which could identify
you as a police officer. Police officer: The drug
itself is referred to as pot, tea, boo, stuff. Man: Dew. Police officer: Grass. Neil: I mean, "Serpico" is meant to be based on a memoir, isn't it? It's meant to actually
be based on a true story, and it's about the sort of beginnings of undercover work as a tactic. I still find it really
difficult to believe. I mean, maybe it's true, but it just seems so bizarre, doesn't it? Handing out drugs at a briefing. For "Serpico," there are many scenes which appear very unrealistic, but you have to remember the context that it was the 1970s, fresh from Nixon's drug war. For a major Hollywood
film, at least it dared to look at the grimy underbelly of it. The techniques were more about how to avoid being in a situation where you would be forced to take drugs, and for heroin and
crack, that's quite easy, because most of the
exchanges are done in places where it wouldn't be so easy to do it. I could skin up, or I cook up heroin in a syringe if I had to. I had to take some speed once, which was quite uncomfortable. Cannabis a few times, I
think maybe three times? Frank: An undercover cop
walks around in disguise, wearing black shoes and white socks. Everybody knows who he is. Neil: If you need to look
scruffy, you look scruffy. I used to play a traveling thief, so I'd be in a full tracksuit
and Nike Air Max trainers. Other times I would wear clothes that would make me look like I was living partially in squats, you know, I would be really
struggling with life. Jason: Tie your shoe, tie your shoe, right now, tie your shoe. Man: Oh, s---. Neil: I think you'd need to have superhuman powers like Jason Bourne to actually avoid a full surveillance like that, because the people that I've worked with who were very good at surveillance, you've got very little chance
of getting away from them or spotting them, actually. Jason: Wait. Wait. Neil: I know it's a
visual aid in the film, but it is rather ridiculous to actually lift your lapel to talk to a microphone, or even have an earpiece in
your ear with a wire actually. Why would you have that? But of course it's
quite visual for a film. You have a microphone attached to you, which is discrete, and you don't need to speak into your wrist
or lapel or whatever. You just speak. Police or security services who are good at surveillance, they know where and when
to use the right codes. Felix: Eddie, I just
wanna ask you a question. Eddie: Yes, Felix. Felix: Stop it. You wouldn't f---ing think you were gonna
get away with this s---? [screams] Neil: You never break cover. The golden rule is you never show out. Going deeper undercover, or, rather, wondering who you can trust. Very early on in my career I realized that I was at potentially
the greatest risk from my colleagues, and most undercover work
is about the drug war. And the trouble is it's half a trillion dollar industry worldwide, and that inevitably causes corruption. I've come across that
corruption many times, and that's the thing that's always made me feel the most unsafe, so the most unsettling
thing about undercover work is not really knowing who you can trust. Felix: So, Johnny, what do you think? Johnny: I think you made your point. Jim: Let's see you roll. Kristen: OK. Neil: It's extremely far-fetched. You don't go into undercover work intending to take drugs. The vast majority of
times I've brought drugs and someone said, "Go and do it, then," I would say, "I don't want to take it now. Why do you want me to take it now?" The training for undercover work isn't actually about behaviors or about how to roll a spliff. It's actually about
the law and the ethics; that's the training, really. The rest you work out later. Schmidt: Hey, my partner,
he wanna see the product. Gangster: Why isn't he talking? Jenko: My name's Jeff. Schmidt: That's Jefe, man. Neil: That does seem a bit daft. I think, any mistake that your partner makes, you're both implicated. You know, if there's a
suspicion on one of you, then as soon as someone has the slightest bit
of suspicion about you, they're looking for other
things to be suspicious about. One of the first things they'll
do is look you up and down. They'll unconsciously do it, and then they'll move on
to the verbal questioning. They'll usually ask something
like an open question, like, "Where did you say you're from again?" You've got to put that
fire out very quickly. If there's two of you, they're
looking you up and down, they're looking the other one up and down. They've got twice as much
information to work with and become suspicious with. So they can become suspicious much quicker if there's more than one of you. John: I'm John, and this is Trevor. Martin: John and Trevor, b------. You're f---ing Old Bill, mate. Neil: Your ultimate nightmare,
really, as an undercover, is someone going, locking the door just after you've been challenged. They're aggressive people; he's responding in the appropriate way in the right situation. And he's thinking on his feet, and he's keeping the eye contact. I think it's a very realistic scene. It's exactly the kind of
challenge that you would get. "Who are you?" That's your classic first
challenge question, really. In fact, I was buying off football hooligans, actually, in Darby, and they were that kind of people. Where I was pushed up against a wall, said he was going to rip my head off and s--- down my neck. You know, and he was instantly violent, and the people around
him, 'cause we were, like, behind a pub in the outdoor area. They all responded really quite interestingly, quite quickly. They were all instantly
part of the violence that was about to go on,
you know, if there was any. But my response: "I'm sorry, mate. I wasn't meaning to tussle
you, you know, sorry." And that meek, humble response
was the right way to go. Yeah, [laughs] OK. Yeah, that's a good way of trying to get you killed, I suppose.
