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A former Richmond police officer who was previously sentenced to jail time for exposing himself to Vancouver private schoolgirls has been charged for an incident in North Vancouver in which he pretended to be a cop.
Andrew James Seangio faces charges of impersonating a police officer in North Vancouver on July 10, 2022, as well as using a forged police badge in North Vancouver on Oct. 21, 2022. Seangio also faces one charge of assault in Vancouver on Aug. 3, 2022.
The impersonation charge stems from a strange incident in the summer of 2022 when a man claiming to be a police officer demanded that a stranger on North Vancouver’s Spirit Trail stop a cyclist in her tracks – resulting in a serious injury to the cyclist.
North Vancouver RCMP said at the time that on the afternoon of July 10, 2022, an older woman was cycling on the Spirit Trail in North Vancouver when a man apparently became upset that she had ridden too close to him. That man then shouted to people nearby that he was a police officer and told them to stop the cyclist.
When someone did, the woman fell off the bike and broke her arm.
Several people in the area witnessed the incident and later spoke to the fake cop, said police, while the supposed officer left the area.
Police later confirmed the man – who was not in uniform at the time – was not actually a police officer and opened an investigation.
But the charges of impersonating a police officer are far from Seangio’s only involvement in the legal system.
Just three days before that, on July 7, 2022, Seangio was found guilty in B.C. Supreme Court of exposing himself to private schoolgirls in Vancouver’s Shaughnessy neighbourhood in early 2019.
Seangio was convicted by a jury on a 10-count indictment, including three counts of exposing his genital organs to people under 16 for a sexual purpose. The other seven counts involve allegations of committing an indecent act in public.
The case included evidence from two undercover officers who dressed as schoolgirls, part of a sting set up after police were alerted to the issue.
Seangio was sentenced to 18 months in jail in November 2022 but was free on bail pending an appeal of that case currently scheduled for February 2024.
More recently, on July 31, 2023, Seangio was found guilty in Ottawa of 33 voyeurism convictions, after being found guilty of secretly filming eight women in bathrooms and showers over a seven-year period when he lived in Ottawa. Most of the incidents dated back to 2014 and 2015.
Seangio is also scheduled to stand trial next year in Ottawa on charges of criminal harassment and sexual assault for allegations that date back about a decade.
– with files from Jeremy Hainsworth
