Listen to this article
Estimated 5 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
A Winnipeg police officer said at a trial Tuesday that two constables accused of tampering with a drug scene later admitted to him that they stole cannabis from the Airbnb suite they were supposed to be guarding.
Const. Justin Ison said his former colleagues, Jonathan Kiazyk and now-disgraced former officer Elston Bostock, separately made those admissions while he was partnered with each of them sometime after the October 2022 incident.
“It was memorable to me because it’s not every day somebody tells you — another officer tells you — that they essentially stole from a search warrant. And so, it stuck with me,” Ison testified on the second day of Kiazyk’s trial.
Kiazyk has pleaded not guilty to breach of trust, obstructing a police officer and unlawfully being in a dwelling house with the intent to commit theft. Kiazyk and Bostock were accused of taking cannabis from the Stradbrook Avenue suite as other officers worked to secure a search warrant.
Court previously heard officers discovered the cannabis and what appeared to be fentanyl after responding to an unrelated call. They left Kiazyk and Bostock to secure the suite until they got a warrant to allow them to legally return and search it.
Prosecutors allege the two officers instead went inside and took some cannabis out of a bag they found. Photos of the cannabis taken before and after officers left the scene to get a warrant appeared to show the bag had been moved, leading to Kiazyk and Bostock being confronted about the discrepancy, court heard.
While they both initially said they went into the suite to use the bathroom, Ison said Kiazyk later told him they grabbed a bag from their police cruiser and filled it with some of the cannabis, and that he said “it was some really good weed.”
“I was a junior officer at the time,” said Ison, who had been on the job for months at the time the suite was searched.
“I just tried to stay neutral. I was in shock and overwhelmed, hearing this from a senior constable. And then furthermore, I felt even more concerned about the case that we had.”
Court heard police ended up seizing roughly $95,000 worth of fentanyl and $10,000 worth of cocaine from the suite. A man they found there was arrested and charged with two counts of possessing scheduled substances and one count of possession of property over $5,000 obtained by crime, court heard.
Those charges were later stayed by federal prosecutors “due to delayed disclosure of the continuity issue in the suite,” court heard Tuesday.
‘Imagine what you could do with all that money’
Ison said on another occasion, Bostock asked him what he thought would have happened if the two of them had been the responding officers to the Airbnb suite.
Ison said he thought the outcome would have been the same — the man would have been arrested and the drugs seized after police got a warrant. He said Bostock disagreed, saying the Vancouver man would have gotten on a flight back home, leaving the drugs and cash.
“‘Could you imagine what you could do with all that money,’ he asked me? He told me that could have been a payment for a mortgage. It could have been for purchasing an engagement ring,” Ison said, describing the statements as Bostock “trying to justify” stealing from a police scene.
Bostock was sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this year after pleading guilty to a long list of offences and has since been removed from the force. At the time of his initial arrest in 2024, the Winnipeg Police Service said he, Kiazyk and another officer who has since pleaded guilty — Matthew Kadyniuk — had been placed on administrative leave.
A fourth officer, Vernon Strutinsky, was also later charged with offences alleged to have happened while partnered with Bostock. His trial is scheduled for later this year.
Defence lawyer Mike Cook noted during cross-examination Tuesday that Ison had no recordings or notes of the conversations the officer said he had with Kiazyk and Bostock.
Cook first suggested Ison was mistaken, then accused the officer of blaming Kiazyk for a conversation that never happened “to divert suspicion from you for having taken some drugs from Bostock.”
“No, I — that’s not true at all,” Ison said.
The trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday, when Kiazyk is expected to testify.