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The Current

Criminal profiler Kate Lines recounts career as trailblazer

Back in the 1970s when Kate Lines decided to join the Ontario Provincial Police, she was told by one officer that the O.P.P. was no place for a woman to work. Today, Kate Lines looks back on her trailblazing career in policing.
CBC Radio ·
Kate Lines is a true pioneer for women in Canadian law enforcement. She worked on some of the biggest and most notorious cases in this country -- as a profiler and undercover agent. (Tony Webster, Flickr cc)

The movie, 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. 

That film was shot, in part... at the FBI's training centre at Quantico, Virginia... which is exactly where Kate Lines 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.
 

" I think, after 33 years,  I did indeed demonstrate I had a place in the O.P.P." - Kate Lines


Kate Lines has written about her work in her book "Crime Seen: from Patrol Cop to Profiler. My stories from behind the yellow tape". Kate Lines spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April. 
 

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

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