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Former Winnipeg police officer Elston Bostock has pleaded guilty to trafficking drugs over a period of years — both to civilians and other police officers.
Bostock, who worked with the Winnipeg Police Service for more than two decades before being removed from the force, admitted to selling drugs including cocaine and psilocybin between 2016 and 2024 in a Winnipeg courtroom Monday.
Bostock admitted he trafficked drugs while on duty as a uniformed police officer, in the parking lots of police stations and from his police vehicle, federal Crown attorney Janna Hyman read from an agreed statement of facts.
Hyman said there was no evidence Bostock was motivated by profit, and called his drug trafficking “akin to social trafficking to friends and colleagues.”
The amounts he sold were personal-use amounts for the buyers, and Bostock was paid for the drugs in a mix of cash, bartered items and favours, she said.
The incidents where Bostock trafficked drugs to other officers included one where an officer who was having medical issues messaged Bostock looking for Percocets, or oxycodone.
On one occasion, Bostock offered to bring an officer MDMA gummies and cannabis joints as a birthday present. On other, an officer applying to transfer to another police force asked Bostock about getting a specific anti-anxiety medication — a controlled substance — to get through a required lie detector test, the agreed statement of facts says.
The cases where Bostock admitted to trafficking drugs to civilians included one where he told a friend who was looking for cannabis edibles to come pick them up when he was working at the Manitoba legislative building. He said to “tell protective services guy … that you are here to see the policeman and I’ll walk down.”
However, Bostock ended up giving the edibles to someone else and later told the friend to come to his home to get them, the statement of facts says.
In another case, Bostock arranged for a friend to buy cocaine directly from the officer’s suppliers and gave the friend advice about how to transport the cocaine on a flight: He should avoid the Winnipeg airport where there could be drug-detecting dogs, but that it could be OK if he took a smaller flight out of the community of St. Andrews.
“Bostock cites his police experience for this knowledge,” the statement of facts says.
Bostock also admitted to selling cocaine on a number of occasions — including one where he arranged to sell a friend 3.5 grams of cocaine for $300, and asked the friend “to come to his place to pick it up because his daughter was napping.”
Bostock was charged after a lengthy investigation, dubbed Project Fibre, that began in April 2024. The details of his drug trafficking were revealed after his cellphone was seized by police last year, the statement of facts says.
He previously pleaded guilty to a number of other charges linked to that probe, after admitting to 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.
His sentencing is scheduled for next week.