Police got tip about 'dirty cop' helping trafficker 15 years before Winnipeg officer's arrest: warrant docs

One of the first red flags about now disgraced Winnipeg officer Elston Bostock came 15 years before he was arrested, when an informant warned police about a "dirty cop" helping a drug trafficker, search warrant documents obtained by CBC News say.

But the investigation at the time into Bostock, who is now in prison for corruption and other offences, was suspended because there was no corroborating evidence.

Over the years that followed, other information continued to come in through police sources — and, in one case, an unrelated wiretap investigation — about an officer believed to be Bostock selling and using drugs, sharing police information and associating with people involved in crime.

That included a tip about an officer named Elston hanging around two drug traffickers in Winnipeg, who described themselves as having "a cop in their pocket," the documents said.

But it wasn't until 2024 that police started the investigation that ultimately ended in Bostock being removed from the force and sent to prison.

The search warrant documents also describe an earlier unsuccessful attempt by police to monitor Bostock's cellphone, and minimal details about some internal actions taken against him before his eventual arrest, for an altercation with another officer and sharing information with a person of interest in a missing person investigation.

They also detail what officers found when they searched Bostock's home after his arrest — including a dead man's private journal and a box of Ozempic with someone else's name on it, both believed to have been taken from police scenes.

Bostock, 49, was sentenced in January to seven years in prison, after pleading guilty to a long list of crimes he committed over the last eight years of his career.

The offences he admitted to included fixing traffic tickets, sharing police information, selling drugs and making lewd comments about a photo he shared with two other officers of the topless body of a woman who'd fatally overdosed.

While prosecutors have told court that reports about Bostock from the police service's professional standards unit dated back to 2009, further details about those reports included in search warrant documents could not previously be shared because of a publication ban.

The ban on sharing information revealed in those hundreds of pages of documents — which shed light on what police knew about Bostock and how early they knew it — was lifted after CBC News successfully fought it in court.

The earliest tip implicating Bostock in the search warrant documents came from a Brandon Police Service informant, who said in 2009 that the "dirty cop" they'd heard about in Winnipeg lived in Waverley Heights and was named Elston.

While there were two Winnipeg police officers living in that neighbourhood at the time, there was only one named Elston, the search warrant documents say. But without other evidence, that investigation ended.

A few years later, another source told police about two brothers who trafficked drugs in Winnipeg and who talked about having a "cop in their pocket."