A constable who has been with the Winnipeg Police Service for nearly 25 years has been charged with theft after items from evidence control went missing.
A 37-year-old woman contacted police on Jan. 20 to say she had been robbed Jan. 15 and that electronic devices had been taken.
“These devices were subsequently pawned at different locations in Winnipeg,” the WPS said in a news release Friday.
Police found the stolen items through routine checks of pawn transactions, and the items were retrieved and placed in the evidence control unit. The items were processed, and police decided they could be given back to the victim.
After the unit discovered May 1 that the items were missing, the WPS professional standards unit began an investigation. The investigation identified a suspect officer assigned to evidence control, and the WPS notified the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba.
Const. Jeffrey Conrad was charged with theft under $5,000 and criminal breach of trust by the professional standards unit Friday. He has been placed on administrative leave pending a review of his employment status.
The governor general’s website states Jeffrey Conrad of Winnipeg was given a Police Exemplary Service Medal on June 3, 2021.
A WPS member with the same name and rank as Conrad was one of two officers involved in a fatal shooting on Sept. 12, 2017. Police were called about reports of a fight involving a man with a gun at a home on Pritchard Avenue late that night.
Adrian Lacquette, 23, had been drinking and doing cocaine and struck his sister. Lacquette then left the house, forced a woman from her SUV and robbed a beer vendor before police caught up with him on Alfred Avenue shortly after 1 a.m. the next day.
Lacquette, holding a sawed-off firearm to his head, told police to shoot him and threatened to shoot a police dog if it went near him.
He then raised the gun in the direction of police, leading two officers to open fire, an inquest heard. The officers performed first aid, but Lacquette was pronounced dead in hospital.
The inquest report was released last month.
Provincial court Judge Robert Heinrichs made no formal recommendations for policy or legislative changes meant to prevent similar deaths from occurring. He did recommend that the families of Lacquette and of another Indigenous man fatally shot by police that same month have the cost of legal representation during inquests covered.
adam.treusch@freepress.mb.ca