Officer found guilty of stealing marijuana from crime scene By: Dean Pritchard Posted: 10:19 AM CDT Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2026 Last Modified: 2:12 PM CDT Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2026 Updates

A longtime Winnipeg Police Service constable has been found guilty of stealing marijuana from a crime scene he had been assigned to guard.

Const. Jonathan Kiazyk will be sentenced at a later date.

“It is important that the community has a basic level of trust in our police officers,” King’s Bench Justice Candace Grammond said Tuesday, finding Kiazyk guilty of unlawful entry with intent to commit an indictable offence, obstructing a police officer and breach of trust.

“In this case, the accused betrayed that trust, and his conduct undermined the integrity of the police force that honest and hard-working officers have expended with great effort to build.”

Kiazyk, 48, held his crying wife in a long hug after Grammond delivered her decision.

“His conduct undermined the integrity of the police force.”

Kiazyk, an 18-year member of the police service, stood trial in May accused of stealing marijuana from a Stradbrook Avenue Airbnb rental he was guarding in October 2022 with now-jailed former constable Elston Bostock.

Bostock, 49, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison in January after pleading guilty to a raft of offences, including selling drugs, voiding traffic tickets and providing confidential police information to underworld associates.

Kiazyk denied stealing or tampering with any drugs in the suite, testifying he entered the suite three or four times to use the washroom. Kiazyk told court Bostock also entered the suite on his own up to three times before investigating officers returned with a search warrant.

Court heard testimony at trial that constables Sean Kirby-Peloquin and Justin Ison responded to a report of a possible break-and-enter at the building shortly after 11 p.m. and found the male renter on a balcony, locked out of his suite. Officers gained entry to the suite, found a large amount of marijuana, fentanyl and cocaine, and arrested the man. Kiazyk and Bostock were assigned to guard the suite until the officers could return with a search warrant.

Kirby-Peloquin and the officers’ street supervisor, then-Patrol-Sgt. Jonathan Ring, both testified they told Kiazyk and Bostock they were not to go in the suite.

Kiazyk testified he thought it was only members of the public that were required to stay out of the suite until the search warrant had been secured, not police officers. Kiazyk said it was the first time in his career he guarded a drug scene.

Kirby-Peloquin told court he took pictures of a bag of marijuana and other drugs in the kitchen, as well as other items in the suite and told Kiazyk and Bostock so before returning to the police station to prepare the search warrant.

A short time after the search warrant was executed, Kirby-Peloquin alerted Ring to “discrepancies” between a photo Ison took of the marijuana bag and a photo Kirby-Peloquin had taken of the same bag hours earlier, proving that someone had moved the bag at a time no one was supposed to be in the suite. That discrepancy led to prosecutors staying charges against the accused drug trafficker in March 2024.

Kiazyk’s lawyer, Mike Cook, argued at trial Bostock’s presence in the suite at times when Kiazyk remained in the outside hallway meant Kiazyk did not have “exclusive opportunity” to tamper with the drug evidence.

“My client’s intent was to use the facilities, and that’s it,” Cook said in a closing argument in May. “Bostock’s the guy who had the bad intent…. That’s the guy who is the culprit here.”

But Kiazyk didn’t just use the washroom while in the suite. He admitted to taking a picture of a gun he falsely claimed he and Bostock had found on a bed and texting it to Ring as a joke, telling him they had searched the apartment.

A second picture sent to Ring showed a smiling Bostock sitting in a chair outside the suite, pointing the firearm in the air. Court heard the weapon was a non-functional pellet gun the officers had retrieved from their cruiser.

Kiazyk admitted taking a picture of the gun inside the apartment would interfere with a crime scene, “yet that is exactly what he did… apparently for the sole purpose of playing the prank, which in my view was, at best, unprofessional, unnecessary and foolish,” Grammond said.

Grammond rejected much of Kiazyk’s testimony, saying he contradicted himself on multiple occasions. Kiazyk told court at least two times he only went into the suite to urinate, then admitted he went into the suite to take the picture of the pellet gun.

Kiazyk claimed he did not want to leave the building to urinate, saying leaving Bostock alone outside the suite would expose him to danger, but admitted either he or Bostock had to have left the building to retrieve the pellet gun from their cruiser.

Kiazyk testified Bostock offered him marijuana after their shift ended and he accepted it following a “perfunctory” explanation from Bostock that the drug came from a legitimate supplier, Grammond said.

“(Kiazyk) immediately thought it was stolen, but just as quickly agreed to accept it… without asking (Bostock) any questions,” Grammond said. “This assertion strains credulity beyond reason, and I do not believe, if this conversation took place that the accused’s concerns would have been assuaged immediately after Bostock’s reassurances.”

Prosecutor Adam Gingera argued at trial the case didn’t boil down to a question of exclusive opportunity, as Cook alleged, but instead hinged on separate confessions Ison and Ring said Kiazyk made to them.

Ring testified he spoke to Kiazyk about the incident a couple months later and Kiazyk admitted to picking up the bag of marijuana to look at it.

Ison, who had been on the force just a few months at the time of the initial investigation, testified he was partnered with Kiazyk sometime later when Kiazyk told him he and Bostock had taken marijuana from the bag and that it was “really good weed.”

Cook argued both Ring and Ison, who did not take notes of their conversations with Kiazyk, were confusing his comments with separate conversations they had with Bostock.

Grammond rejected that theory, saying of Ring: “He was a supervisor discussing a serious performance issue with two senior officers, such that it was an important discussion.”

Ison’s recall of when Kiazyk told him about stealing the marijuana was contradicted by evidence confirming Kiazyk was on leave at the time for an injury, but Ison remained unshaken on cross-examination as to the substance of Kiazyk’s disclosure, Grammond said.

“He testified that he remembers the conversation, including the smile on the accused’s face when he talked about the marijuana.”

“He testified that he remembers the conversation, including the smile on the accused’s face when he talked about the marijuana and that it was almost as if the accused was bragging about how good the marijuana was,” Grammond said.

“I accept Ison’s evidence that as a junior officer, the conversation with the accused was shocking to him, that it gave him additional cause for concern about the (drug) prosecution, that it was tough to hear that a senior officer stole from a crime scene and that it was memorable,” she said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca