Kate Lines, retired chief superintendent of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), gave us a very interesting speech on January 4, 2017.
Hear Kates Lines Speech on YouTube
Ms. Lines, who grew up on a farm in Ennismore, spent 33 years in law enforcement, working her way up from patrol police officer to criminal profiler, and eventually, superintendent. She has written a book, Crime Seen, which is primarily about her training and experience as a profiler but adds, when people ask about her career, her undercover work is often a point of interest.
When she first started working undercover, Ms. Lines was in her mid 20s. She had spent the previous four years working as a traffic patrol officer. She wanted to try something new. Coincidentally, for the first time, the OPP was looking for a woman to go undercover. Most of the work was drug-related. Ms. Lines says her orientation into a community was often initiated by someone working as an informant. They would introduce her as their new girlfriend or wife, she’d work to cultivate relationships, and then the informant would back off.
“I was able to buy drugs relatively easily,” Ms Lines says.
She spent her longest stint undercover working with the Outlaw motorcycle gang. It was a project that spanned several years, involving four undercover officers. That work acted as a launching pad for Ms. Lines, who was the second Canadian to attend a criminal profiling training program in Virginia. From there, she joined detectives at the Criminal Investigation Branch of the OPP and climbed the ranks while assisting with a number of high-profile cases including, the abduction and murder of Kristen French, who died at the hands of Paul Bernardo and Karla Holmolka.
During her time with the OPP, Ms. Lines was a proponent of the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System – a tool that helps different police forces and jurisdictions share information to solve cases faster.
Since she retired in 2010, Ms. Lines has taken on a teaching role with Fleming College and she’s become a licensed private investigator, mostly handling human rights and corporate harassment issues. She is also the chair of the Victim Justice Network, an organization that’s establishing an online network to promote awareness of services and support available to victims of crime in Canada. Ms. Lines, lives in the Peterborough