Public hearing demanded for VPD sergeant on sexual misconduct charges

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VICTORIA — An investigation into sexual misconduct by a veteran Vancouver police officer who also teaches criminology was sparked by anonymous comments on a social media post, the BC Office of the Police Complaints Commission said.

The office announced Wednesday that it had convened the first public hearing into allegations of sexual misconduct against Sergeant Keiron McConnell, who worked as a lecturer at several post-secondary educational institutions while serving with the Vancouver Police Department.

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McConnell, a Vancouver police officer for 33 years, is accused of misconduct toward seven women, including colleagues and former students at Royal Roads and Kwantlen Polytechnic universities.

The office said the allegations were unproven, and McConnell did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

A hearing notice detailing the allegations said the investigation was launched after a photo of McConnell was posted on social media in late December 2021.

The statement said “unknown individuals” commented on the post calling McConnell a “sexual predator,” and the following month a police officer forwarded Facebook messages from McConnell to the VPD’s Professional Standards Division.

The officer said the 2018 messages “started off friendly but then evolved into something she found inappropriate and sexual,” the statement said.

It says that she did not report it at the time because of McConnell’s “rank and status” and believed that there would be consequences for her at the VPD.

The Commissioner ordered an investigation in April 2022 and heard testimony from three of McConnell’s former students at Royal Roads University, who alleged that he sent them inappropriate or sexual electronic messages while he was a student between 2015 and 2017.

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One of the defendants said McConnell invited students for a drink in November 2016, but she found his behavior in her presence “increasingly uncomfortable,” the statement said.

She said that after she decided to leave, McConnell followed her into a taxi without being asked and tried to kiss her after preventing her from getting out of the vehicle, the statement said.

Another student claims she felt uncomfortable after receiving text messages from him on her personal cell phone and did not know where he got her number.

A third student claimed that McConnell sent her Facebook messages in 2018 that “contained euphemisms for sexual terms.”

The student was afraid that McConnell would “speak negatively about her” to police recruiters if she did not respond to his messages, and she “ultimately changed her mind about becoming a police officer, which she attributed to her experiences with Sergeant McConnell,” the statement said.

The commissioner’s office also heard from a Kwantlen Polytechnic University student who alleged that McConnell sent her “sexually inappropriate messages” in 2017 and 2018.

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After she graduated, McConnell allegedly sent her a message “which she interpreted as him soliciting her to perform sexual acts,” the statement said.

The statement said the office also heard from two lower-ranking female police officers who worked with McConnell.

One claimed he made “sexualized comments” both in person and in text messages between 2015 and 2018.

The other claimed that he had made “repeated sexualized and inappropriate comments” to her in nightly social media messages, including “fantasies about her engaging in sexual acts with him at his desk.”

The statement said that during the investigation, McConnell admitted to sending some messages, but stressed that they were intended to be confidential “and were exchanged between consenting adults.”

“McConnell insisted that he would have stopped if the recipients of these messages had told him to stop,” the statement said. He also denied having behaved dishonorably.

The Commissioner’s Office said in a statement that given the nature of the allegations, it had concluded that an initial public hearing in the office was warranted. Previously, changes to the law had paved the way for such investigations to take place earlier in the police disciplinary process.

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The office says the commissioner found that exploiting a power imbalance for sexual purposes not only harms those directly affected, but also has a negative impact on the integrity of police work and public trust in the police.

The office said it had appointed retired provincial judge Carol Baird Ellan to preside over the trial as an arbitrator and determine whether McConnell was guilty of misconduct.

The hearing dates have not yet been set.

When asked for comment, Kwantlen Polytechnic University confirmed that McConnell was a lecturer at the school but said it could not provide further information due to privacy laws. It said it expects all employees to adhere to its code of conduct, including its sexual misconduct policy.

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