WARNING: This story contains graphic comments made about the body of a dead woman.A veteran Winnipeg officer is expected to go to prison after admitting on Friday to a long list of allegations involving corruption, along with other inappropriate and illegal actions, stretching back years.Const. Elston Bostock, who has worked with the Winnipeg Police Service for more than two decades, admitted to offences including getting traffic tickets voided in exchange for liquor and gift cards, stealing cannabis from a police scene, sharing confidential police information and sending lewd texts about a photo he took of the nearly naked body of a woman who had fatally overdosed.He was charged after a lengthy investigation, dubbed Project Fibre, that began in April 2024. The charges he pleaded guilty to include breach of trust, attempting to obstruct justice, theft under $5,000 and offering an indignity to human remains.The investigation, which discovered offences ranging back to 2016, began after police received “reports from multiple confidential sources that the accused had been associating with and providing police information to non-police actors involved in illicit activity,” Crown attorney Ari Millo read from a 20-page agreed statement of facts Friday at Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg.While some of those allegations came to light early on, others were not discovered until Bostock’s personal cellphone was analyzed following his arrest.Bostock, who sat in the prisoner’s box wearing a grey crewneck sweatshirt, looked down at the floor and at times put his head in his hands as details of the allegations he was pleading guilty to were read out.”You are pleading guilty this morning to a number of charges, because you admit guilt on those charges?” Richard Wolson, Bostock’s lawyer, asked him during a plea inquiry.”Yes,” Bostock said.The guilty pleas were entered before Justice Kenneth Champagne as part of a deal that will see Bostock’s lawyers ask for nothing less than a penitentiary sentence and provincial Crown attorneys cap their request at six years.Bostock still faces and is expected to plead guilty to other federal drug charges, for which prosecutors are expected to ask for a consecutive sentence of a year, court heard.Winnipeg Police Service Chief Gene Bowers, seen in a file photo, said in a statement that Bostock remains suspended without pay. (CBC)In a news release, Winnipeg Police Service Chief Gene Bowers said Bostock remains suspended without pay.”There is no place for individuals like this within our organization and we [are] taking appropriate actions” through regulations, he said.Bostock is scheduled to be sentenced in January, after a psychological report requested by his defence is completed.He was first charged last year alongside Const. Jonathan Kiazyk and Const. Matthew Kadyniuk. All three were released from custody at that time, but Bostock was arrested on additional charges in August, when a fourth officer, Const. Vernon Strutinsky, was also arrested. Bostock has been in custody since.None of the charges against the other officers have been tested in court and all three are presumed innocent.Voided tickets for liquor, cigars, gift cardsThe agreed facts read in court Friday shed light on exactly what Bostock admitted to — including getting rid of people’s traffic tickets in exchange for liquor, cigars and gift cards over a period of years.Bostock used his position to try to prevent traffic tickets from being given to or prosecuted against his associates or their acquaintances more than 20 times beginning in 2016 and continuing until just before his arrest in 2024. He was successful a dozen times, the agreed facts said.That was almost always done in return for some form of payment for himself, other officers who helped, or both — from cigars and 40-ounce bottles of liquor to free car washes, along with gift cards for the liquor store, Tim Hortons and Starbucks.In one September 2024 case, Bostock tried to get another officer to give false information to a prosecutor, in order to get an acquaintance’s traffic charge stayed.Bostock “suggested that the Crown would not object, because prosecutors were overburdened and unlikely to pursue the charge,” the statement of facts said, adding the officer in that case declined.Police Chief Bowers said in addition to the criminal conduct the investigation into Bostock revealed, the regulatory offences discovered are “being addressed through the disciplinary process.”Lewd comments about photo of dead womanBostock also admitted to taking a photo on his personal cellphone of the body of a woman who was in her underwear and topless, after he was dispatched to the home where the woman was found dead in 2021.The image shows the woman’s body on the ground, “surrounded by discarded medical supplies from unsuccessful attempts to save her life,” Millo read from the statement of facts as the woman’s family sat in the front row of the courtroom.3 Winnipeg officers charged with crimes including theft, breach of trust, other offencesBostock later sent that image to two other officers, saying she’d died of a fentanyl overdose. In one of the messages, Bostock said it was the “best body on a dead body I ever saw.”In another, he called it the “first time I was horny over a dead body.”Stole cannabis from police sceneIn an October 2022 case, Bostock also took cannabis from an Airbnb suite he and Const. Kiazyk were guarding as investigators applied for a search warrant, according to the agreed statement of facts.Police had responded to the suite after a man reported getting locked out of his unit on the third-storey balcony. When they entered, they saw “large quantities of fentanyl, a large bag of cannabis on a kitchen counter, and other drug paraphernalia in plain sight,” and arrested the man.After police returned with a warrant, they found fentanyl, cocaine and $25,000 cash. However, one of the investigators noticed that a bag of cannabis had been moved since it was photographed when police first entered the suite.Bostock later admitted to a junior constable he was partnered with that he’d stolen cannabis from that police scene.All charges related to that investigation were stayed “due to delayed disclosure on the part of the investigators of the continuity issue inside of the suite,” the statement of facts said.Ties to suspected drug traffickerBostock also admitted to looking up and sharing confidential police information, including people’s vehicle registration details and addresses, with people outside the police force from October 2022 to 2024.In one case, Bostock gave internal police information about an individual to someone who requested it and asked them “not to kill the party in question” — then shared the person’s name and other personal details, the agreed facts said. By June 2024, concerns that a police investigation had been compromised led police to get a warrant for the cellphone of a suspected drug trafficker — something they believed would establish Bostock’s association with the alleged trafficker and his associates. That data turned up photos of Bostock “with many of [the] same criminal associates depicted in photographs that police had already viewed on social media,” and texts between the accused trafficker and others in a group chat referencing Bostock looking up licence plate numbers.Winnipeg officers disciplined dozens of times in 5-year period, records released under court order showPolice later planted a narrative on an internal system about a video of an assault sent in a group chat found on that phone, believing Bostock would access it.When one of Bostock’s associates told him someone they knew was going to be arrested and interviewed as part of the investigation into that video, Bostock offered to look it up on the system — and did, according to a system audit later done.Bostock then relayed information he got from the staged police narrative, “after explicitly confirming that he had reviewed the file information,” the agreed facts said.An ‘integrity test’By October 2024, investigators with the police service’s professional standards unit had been authorized to conduct and surreptitiously record an “integrity test” on Bostock, staging a vehicle break-in at a motel.It involved an undercover RCMP officer posing as a victim who confronted a fake suspect and ripped a backpack off him while he fled.The contents of the backpack included bear spray, a covertly marked package of cannabis, inert drugs resembling Xanax and methamphetamine, a pack of black market cigarettes and $75 in covertly marked bills.”As part of the integrity test, the undercover officer was to provide the accused with the unopened backpack and provide information about an associate” of Bostock’s, the agreed facts said. The test was observed by investigators inside the motel, and via audio-video recording equipment secretly installed in Bostock’s police cruiser.The statement of facts said the junior officer Bostock was partnered with that day, Const. Kadyniuk, allegedly put the backpack in their trunk and “made a comment intimating that the accused would like what was inside of it.”Decision not to charge police who fatally ran over woman in Winnipeg park leaves sister angry, frustratedBostock later took the cash out of the bag, while Kadyniuk allegedly put the cigarettes in his duty bag. Later that morning, they used some of the cash to buy themselves breakfast.Both officers later became suspicious that the reported vehicle break-in may have been a test and “continuously discussed whether the call had been legitimate,” the statement of facts said.They later allegedly returned some items to the backpack before putting it in Bostock’s police station locker. Investigators retrieved the $20 spent on breakfast from the restaurant the officers went to.Less than a month later, Bostock was arrested. During a search of his home, officers found prohibited weapons including brass knuckles, the cannabis used during the integrity test, and drugs including psilocybin and what was believed to be cocaine and a cutting agent, the statement of facts said.Letters to defence lawyersBostock’s guilty pleas come after letters were sent last month by the Manitoba Prosecution Service to a number of defence lawyers who had cases where Bostock or his co-accused officers were involved.”Out of an abundance of caution, you are receiving this letter because a conviction was entered on the above charge(s), and Officer Bostock had involvement in the incident’s file,” reads part of one of the letters, which was obtained by CBC News.The letter, signed by Winnipeg trial director Jennifer Mann, went on to list the charges Bostock was facing at the time. Case dismissed: Ex-Winnipeg police officer’s suit ‘an abuse of the court process,’ judge rulesA notice to the profession from Legal Aid Manitoba dated Oct. 31 then referenced letters “regarding the conduct of a number of police officers” who “have been charged with offences regarding breaches of the public trust in the execution of their duties.””If you have received one of these letters, your duty as counsel requires that you do a summary review to determine whether the conduct of the officer named in the letter may have committed misconduct and whether that misconduct would have reasonably resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” the notice said.It added that while Legal Aid “has not been funded to compensate counsel for this work,” if a lawyer “concludes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred based upon the facts of the case [Legal Aid] is of the view that this would constitute new evidence and is prepared to fund an appeal.”Bostock was granted the Governor General’s Police Exemplary Service Award in June 2024 — an award that was revoked this past June.
Winnipeg police officer pleads guilty to offences including voiding tickets, stealing cannabis from scene
