If I look back over my years with any intellectual honesty, I truly have to wonder - why the hell did I ever work so hard to put away members of organized crime? Why did I risk my physical and mental well being to work as an informant and agent for the RCMP? Why did I allow my family to suffer through this hell and its toll on me for so long? Why did I spend the last nineteen years testifying against four killers only to see their sentences come to an end while mine and my family's sentence continue?
I would like to say that the answer to this is simple. However, the truth to this introspection is as complex as most of the operations and investigations in which I was involved. The line and the motive are often blurry as a human source and definitely ever changing the longer you work. Is it for money? Is it for the thrill? Is it self protection? These can all be true and are often motivators in the short term - but as years pass will these things be enough to push you to persevere in an insane way of life? Do short term rewards or thrills push you to endure the evil you witness and partake in as a human source? Is it all worth the toll in the end?
I answer all of these questions in my latest book You Don't Know Me - I'm in RCMP Witness Protection.
Looking back from the vantage point I have today, I am left with only a few unanswered questions. The two main ones are not in this article....
Why do we call the legal system a "justice system" if justice is removed?
Why has society made the police the bad guys and the criminals the good guys?
My gut says apathy and ignorance are the answers but my experience suggests a much more cynical answer!