Former Winnipeg police constable Elston Bostock apologized at his sentencing hearing for photographing a dead woman while on duty and for selling drugs to friends and colleagues. Bostock, 49, had pleaded guilty to breach of trust, drug trafficking, attempting to obstruct justice and offering an indignity to human remains. The Crown sought seven years in prison.
An apology in court
A former Winnipeg police officer who sold drugs to friends and colleagues and photographed a dead woman while on duty used his sentencing hearing to apologize for what he had done.
Elston Bostock, 49, told the Court of King’s Bench hearing that he regretted the photograph most of all. “I’d like to deeply apologize to the family and the victim for the hurt and pain I have caused with my most regrettable action,” he said.
He said not a day had passed during the months he had spent in custody without regret, and that there would not be a day when he did not think about what he had done. The former constable, who served with the Winnipeg Police Service for 22 years, also apologized to the force, saying his actions had tainted how the public views police and had tarnished the service’s reputation.
Justice Kenneth Champagne was to deliver the sentence at a later date. The Crown asked for seven years in prison in total, while the defence recommended about two years.
The photograph
Court heard that Bostock was responding to a call when he photographed a woman who had died. She was partially clothed, and court heard she had died from an overdose.
He sent the photo to two other officers, accompanied by comments that sexualized and degraded her. That conduct supported the charge of offering an indignity to human remains, one of the offences covered by his guilty pleas.
No detail in the court reporting identifies the woman beyond those circumstances, and her family was the first recipient of Bostock’s apology. A photograph taken on duty and shared with colleagues is not a private lapse: it is a breach of trust against a person who could not consent, and against her family.
Drugs sold to friends and fellow officers
Bostock also pleaded guilty to drug trafficking. Court and earlier plea proceedings heard that over a period of years he sold drugs including cocaine, ecstasy and psilocybin to friends and to colleagues.
Federal plea proceedings described the activity as social trafficking to friends and colleagues, in personal-use amounts, sometimes paid for in cash, bartered items or favours. That description does not lessen the central fact for a serving officer: the seller was a uniformed constable, and some of the buyers wore the same uniform.
His full list of guilty pleas also included breach of trust and attempting to obstruct justice, offences that go to the use of his position, not only to the drugs themselves.
How the investigation unfolded
Bostock was arrested in November 2024, along with two other officers. More charges were added the following August, and a fourth officer was also arrested. Bostock was removed from the force late last year.
The case grew out of a lengthy internal investigation by the service’s professional standards unit, which began after other officers came forward with concerns. The probe included audits, analysis of GPS data, surveillance by the RCMP and a search of Bostock’s cellphone.
Investigators also staged an integrity test. Court heard that Bostock seized a backpack containing narcotics, cash and cigarettes that belonged to an alleged criminal, an event arranged to test how he would handle it. What investigators found through the audits, the phone search and the staged seizure formed the basis of the prosecution case that Bostock later admitted by pleading guilty.
Two positions, far apart
The distance between the Crown and defence positions framed the decision left to Justice Champagne. Prosecutors sought seven years in total: reporting on the plea arrangement put the Crown request at six years for the provincial charges, plus a further year for the federal drug offences. The defence argued for about two years.
A report prepared for the court, summarized in later sentencing coverage, found no evidence of psychiatric illness. It described an officer who had compartmentalized difficult scenes from his work and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs during periods of depression. Near the end of his career, court heard, he was drinking alcohol and using marijuana during shifts.
That background did not change the admitted facts. It sits alongside the apology in the record the sentencing judge had to weigh: a 22-year career, offending uncovered by his own colleagues, and a photograph Bostock called his most regrettable action.
