Manitoba man charged with impersonating police officer
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/05/2021 (1069 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A Rossburn man has been charged with impersonating a police officer, after allegedly talking his way past a First Nations checkpoint behind the wheel of a retired RCMP cruiser.
“It’s incredible how he picked up that vehicle and made it look like an undercover RCMP car,” Manitoba First Nation Police Service Insp. Dave Scott said Monday.
Police said, on May 8, a male suspect driving a 2014 white Ford Taurus approached a checkpoint on Waywayseecappo First Nation, where access is restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The man told a woman monitoring the checkpoint he was a police officer and had business on the First Nation, located some 120 kilometres northwest of Brandon, police said.
The suspect exited the First Nation at the same checkpoint a short time later, telling the same woman he wanted to search her before saying, “Just kidding” and driving away.
“It’s very concerning,” Scott said. “We don’t know what his intentions were. You wonder how many other people he may have approached in this manner.”
Police were able to identify a suspect through the vehicle’s licence plate, Scott said.
Police arrested the 45-year-old suspect at his Rossburn home, where they also sized the decommissioned cruiser.
Scott said the vehicle had been equipped with red and blue flashing lights, bars on the rear windows and police decals.
He said the man likely bought the vehicle at auction, at which time all regulation police gear would have been removed.
“Usually, they are stripped of all road equipment,” he said. “He probably refabricated (the parts).”
Scott said police are investigating a report the same vehicle may have been spotted recently in Brandon.
“We got a call from a citizen in Brandon who says he may have seen the same vehicle with its lights flashing,” Scott said. “The citizen pulled over and it just drove past him.”
The suspect, who has not been identified, has been released on an undertaking and will appear in Rossburn court at a later date.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
