Former B.C. RCMP Supt. pleads guilty to assault with weapon<\/p>\n
Published 2:00 pm Friday, July 3, 2026<\/p>\n
A former superintendent for the Vernon North Okanagan RCMP pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon Friday, almost one year after he was involved in an incident near Bella Coola.<\/p>\n
Steven McVarnock, born in 1961, was charged with assault with a weapon and assault Aug. 20, 2025, related to an incident that took place in Hagensborg July 29 of that year.<\/p>\n
McVarnock appeared virtually from Bella Coola in Robson Square Provincial Court July 3, and entered a guilty plea on the assault with weapon charge.<\/p>\n
This is the second time McVarnock has been convicted of an assault, though it\u2019s potentially the first such conviction to appear on his record.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because he was granted an absolute discharge<\/a> on a separate assault conviction last year.<\/p>\n McVarnock pleaded not guilty to assault with a weapon and entered a guilty plea to the lesser charge of simple assault April 2, 2025. That charge stemmed from an incident in Spallumcheen on June 29, 2024.<\/p>\n Following the pleas, the matter proceeded directly to sentencing and the court granted an absolute discharge, meaning McVarnock\u2019s assault conviction does not appear on his criminal record.<\/p>\n An absolute discharge is a sentencing option a judge can use if it is considered to be in the offender\u2019s best interest and not against public interest.<\/p>\n McVarnock retired after having served 32 years with the RCMP, according to a blog post. He started as the Vernon RCMP\u2019s superintendent in December 2006 and spent less than three years in that post. He spent three and a half years as commander of the RCMP\u2019s V Division in Nunavut, from 2009 to 2013, according to the Nunatsiaq News<\/a>.<\/p>\n McVarnock\u2019s current assault case was moved from Bella Coola Provincial Court to Robson Square Provincial Court early this year.<\/p>\n McVarnock\u2019s lawyer said in entering the guilty plea, McVarnock understood he was admitting to the essential elements of the offence.<\/p>\n A pre-sentencing report was ordered, and McVarnock will return to court on Sept. 16 for the purpose of having the court receive the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former B.C. RCMP Supt. pleads guilty to assault with weapon Published 2:00 pm Friday, July 3, 2026 A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-779046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779046","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=779046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}