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The Current

Criminal profiler Kate Lines recounts career as police trailblazer

She wanted to be a cop but was told there was no place for a woman in the force. Kate Lines would go on to a career of firsts with the Ontario Provincial Police, the first woman to work undercover, one of the first to be trained by FBI profilers and decades investigating disturbing crimes in the country.
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When Kate Lines first joined the Ontario Provincial Police back in the 1970s, they didn't even have uniforms that fit women properly. She's a true pioneer for women in Canadian law enforcement, and she worked some of the biggest and most notorious cases in this country -- as a profiler and undercover agent. (Tony Webster, Flickr cc)
The Current27:29Criminal profiler Kate Lines, trail blazer for women in law enforcement - April 13, 2015

The chilling movie, The Silence of the Lambs, shed light on one of law enforcement's dark arts — Profiling, and the use of behavioural science... to get inside the mind of subjects, and truly understand criminal behaviour.

And that film was shot, in part, at the FBI's training centre at Quantico, Virginia... which is exactly where my next guest also learned the art of criminal profiling.

Kate Lines was one of the first Canadian law enforcement agents to ever study at the FBI centre.

It's just one of the many trails she blazed in her more than three decades with the Ontario Provincial Police.

When she first joined the force in 1977... one officer told her there was no place for women on the force.

When she retired in 2010.... she was the O.P.P.'s Chief Superintendent.

Kate Lines has written about her work in new book called "Crime Seen: From Patrol Cop to Profiler, My Stories from Behind the Yellow Tape." She was in Toronto. 


This segment was produced by The Current's Josh Bloch. 

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