The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) has confirmed that a Victoria police officer was suspended after a woman accused him of extorting her and grooming her.
On Tuesday, VicPD and the OPCC said an officer had been suspended amid an investigation into a misconduct complaint, though the nature of the complaint was not disclosed.
Since then, a video posted to TikTok shows a young woman claiming that a VicPD officer, who she says she had known since she was 15 and dating his son, had groomed her and taken intimate videos of her that he used to extort her.
“This is a story of how I was extorted by a supervisor with the Victoria Police [Department], and treated poorly by the department when I reported the incident,” the video begins.
The woman says the officer knew her when she was a vulnerable youth, before pursuing her from a position of power.
“He took multiple videos of me, and refused to give me any access to them, and took a lot of time editing them so the background was blurred, and he was out of the shots,” the video continues.
The poster says he also contacted her regularly while on duty, and that she overheard personal information about other incidents across the city that were being broadcast through the officer’s police radio while he was contacting her.
She also says she had run into her ex-boyfriend, the officer’s son, who allegedly invited her to speak with him in his car before sexually assaulting her. She then contacted the officer, who she says was on duty at the time, who in turn encouraged her not to report the incident.
“Then in June 2023, I begged him for my videos back, but he wouldn’t,” said the poster. “I reported the extortion, the fact that I would hear all the private information through his radio, and the sexual assault to Victoria Police, and multiple of the police officers in the department laughed at me – told me to go away because they were friends with [the officer].”
On Wednesday, the OPCC confirmed the investigation is related to the allegations laid out in the video.
It adds that it chose the Vancouver Police Department to investigate the complaint so that the investigation could remain at an arm’s length from where the complaint originated from.
In its release Tuesday, Victoria police said that it “takes allegations of misconduct seriously and fully supports the investigative process and this decision; we are accountable to the citizens and communities we serve. We continue to support this investigation and further details cannot be shared at this time.”
The officer has not been charged and CHEK News is not naming him pending the outcome of the investigation.
The person who made the video did not return our request for comment.
TUESDAY STORY: VicPD officer suspended due to misconduct complaint investigation
Adam Chan
