The crimes Bostock admitted to include the October 2022 incident Kiazyk is accused in. The pair were working as partners assigned to secure an Airbnb suite on Stradbrook Avenue after police found drugs on an unrelated call.<\/p>\n
Bostock and Kiazyk were tasked with waiting outside the suite as investigators applied for a warrant to legally allow them to search inside the suite where the drugs were seen, court heard.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege the two officers instead went into the suite and took some of the cannabis that was in a bag inside.<\/p>\n
“Police are entrusted with an enormous level of power and responsibility,” Crown attorney Adam Gingera said in an opening statement to Court of King’s Bench Justice Candace Grammond.<\/p>\n
Gingera alleged Kiazyk “brazenly misused that power to engage in conduct that inevitably undermined a serious drug trafficking investigation.”<\/p>\n
Kiazyk, who is not in custody, appeared in court wearing a suit alongside family members Monday and sat next to his lawyer during testimony. At the time of his arrest, the Winnipeg Police Service said Kiazyk, Bostock and another officer who has since pleaded guilty had been placed on administrative leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A fourth officer was also later charged with offences alleged to have happened while partnered with Bostock. <\/p>\n
A fourth officer was later charged with offences alleged to have happened while partnered with Bostock.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777947669_871_default.jpg\")
Search warrant documents obtained by CBC News included this photo of Elston Bostock, which court heard Monday was sent to a police supervisor as Bostock and Kiazyk were assigned to guard a drug scene. (Manitoba Courts)<\/p>\n
Winnipeg police Const. Sean Kirby-Peloquin testified Monday morning police were initially sent to the scene in 2022 for a report of a possible break-and-enter after a man was seen on the third-floor balcony of someone’s suite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When officers arrived, the man said he’d gotten locked out of his Airbnb suite and was trying to get someone’s attention for help. Officers then went into the man’s suite with an entry code he’d given them and saw cannabis and what appeared to be fentanyl packaged for sale, Kirby-Peloquin said.<\/p>\n
Police arrested the man and took photos of the drugs at the scene before leaving to get a warrant. That is when Kirby-Peloquin said he turned the scene over to Kiazyk and Bostock and told them not to go inside.<\/p>\n
Patrol Sgt. Jonathan Ring, who was working as Kiazyk and Bostock’s supervisor the night of the incident, testified later Monday that after the pair were left alone at the suite, he started getting texts from Kiazyk.<\/p>\n
Those texts, which were read to court, said Bostock \u2014 who was referred to as “Booster” in the texts \u2014 had found a gun under the mattress and more drugs in a suitcase inside the suite. That was followed by photos of what appeared to be a gun on a mattress and Bostock holding a gun, which court heard an analysis later determined was a BB air gun, in a hallway.<\/p>\n
Ring, who was out working on another investigation at the time, testified he initially thought the messages were a joke in an attempt to “mess with” him, since he said the officers had no reason to have gone into the suite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“At the time, I was very annoyed,” he said. “It seemed inappropriate. I mean, obviously I know every workplace, people joke around and stuff like that\u2026. But it did stick out as being [an] ‘OK, what are these guys doing?’ kind of thing.”<\/p>\n
‘A little bewildered’<\/p>\n
When officers returned to the suite with a search warrant, police seized roughly $95,000 worth of fentanyl and $10,000 worth of cocaine, which Ring called a “significant” seizure for a street-level general patrol case.<\/p>\n
The photos police took at that point showed a bag of cannabis had been moved since the initial scene photos were taken, leading to Kiazyk and Bostock later being confronted about the discrepancies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ring said Kiazyk told him they went into the suite to use the washroom and picked up the bag of cannabis to look at it.<\/p>\n
“At this point, I’m looking at this as an education piece and trying to prevent things from happening again. And I was a little bewildered,” said Ring, who testified he thought two officers with their seniority would know better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bostock had served 21 years when he was arrested, while Kiazyk had served 18, a police news release issued at the time stated. <\/p>\n
Kirby-Peloquin said he was concerned at the time about what the officers’ actions would mean for the investigation and that he feared the tainted evidence would affect police credibility.<\/p>\n
Search warrant documents, which were under a publication ban CBC News successfully fought in court, said prosecutors stayed the charges against the man arrested in the drug case after the details of the officers’ actions came to light.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Gingera said Kiazyk told another junior officer months after the incident that he and Bostock “had done more than move the drug exhibit \u2014 they had stolen from it.”<\/p>\n
During cross-examination Monday, defence lawyer Mike Cook pointed out Ring wrote in a memo after the incident that he didn’t think Kiazyk had ever disobeyed a direct order.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cook also asked Kirby-Peloquin whether he thought it was “much of a stretch to think sometimes policemen can do some weird things because they were taught weird things” by fellow officers.<\/p>\n
“If you’re speaking in generalities, yeah,” the officer replied. “Certainly, odd things have happened \u2014 not always to the standard.”<\/p>\n
The trial is scheduled to continue Tuesday afternoon, when another officer is expected to testify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trial of a police officer accused of tampering with drug evidence at a scene he was supposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-648420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}