The Decibel - In Her Defence: Police officer preys on vulnerable women

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Officers at the Regina Police Service begin an internal investigation of one of their colleagues, and turn up a case larger and more complex than they could have imagined. Sgt. Alana Heiliger begins to identify patterns in an officer’s use of police databases, and a notebook filled with names and cryptic notations provides valuable clues.In Her Defence: Breach of Trust is a seven-part original podcast series from The Globe and Mail. The show is made by Kasia Mychajlowycz and Jana G. Pruden. Sound mixing is by Dave Crosbie, with additional recording by Amber Bracken. The show’s theme song is “Black Horses” by Birdbelly. Show art by Celeste Woods. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, it's Maynika. Today, we wanted to share an episode from the new season of In Her Defense, Breach of Trust. This season focuses on a police officer in Saskatchewan who used police databases to prey on women. The whistleblower in this case is Carrie Benjo. She's a journalist and editor of Eagle Feather News. She's also a residential school survivor. We thought this would be an important listen on Truth and Reconciliation Day. here's the episode. That's Bob. Bob Simmons-Chuk.

My friend Carrie Benjo is describing the moment that changed her life. It happened at a cafe in Regina. She was having coffee with a woman she knew who'd worked at the Regina police service. And Carrie was asking the woman about a picture of a man she'd found online. The man had short dark hair, a salt and pepper beard and flesh red cheese. He was wearing a plaid shirt. She knew him as a divorced contractor named Jay Lewis, and she'd been seeing him on and off for five years.

They'd had a romantic relationship, but more than that, she thought of Jay as one of her best friends. For a time, he was one of the most important people in her life. But then he did something really uncharacteristic. He swore in a text, after she asked, asked why he stood her up. He'd said, My dad was in the F in hospital.

Many of us aren't going to pay attention to one F word. And by the way, he did say the full swear. But because of her history, Carrie has become highly attuned to potential danger and the moods of men. Jay had never sworn around her before. At that moment, she knew something was off. She just knew.

it. It got me wondering, like, if he could do this, if he could just, like, suddenly start swearing. What else is he capable of? Because as a person who's survived domestic violence, you know, like having somebody shout at me or swear at me, it's very triggering. And so when he did that, it was such a shock. And now at this cafe, a woman was telling her that the man in the photo is not a construction contractor named Jay Lewis. She told Carrie... That's Bob. Bob Seminchuck. A sergeant with the Regina Police Service.

I think it was sort of like... You know when you get that little electric jolt? It was that combined with hearing his real name. I think had his name been Jay Lewis a cop, then it wouldn't have been as jarring, but to know it was Bob Simmonschuk, Sergeant Bob Seaminchuk. I don't know if it was fear or shock. I think it was a combination of both, but I played it off like I didn't, I wasn't

that alarmed because I was talking to somebody who worked alongside him. The woman had worked with Bob. She told Carrie he was nice, if a little bit shy. And probably she gave me the worst advice. I just like, just talked to him. But I immediately knew I was like I wasn't going to talk to him about this because, you know, just going over like the length of time I knew him and how committed he was to that. character of Jay Lewis, I knew there was something not right about him.

And so my immediate response was self-preservation. And so I needed to figure out what to do next and who I can trust and who would be able to help me. And then once I had the name, I went to another person. who knows a lot of police officers. And I gave her the name and I gave her the photo. And she was like, she didn't know him off the bat. And then she's like, let me get back to you. And then she came back and she was like, he's a creep.

He's married. And she's like, why? What's going on? Tell me. And so I told her about meeting him and how I met him and when I met him. and that he told me his name was J. Lewis. And she was like, what? She was like, that doesn't sound right.

She was like, after you filed? Carrie had filed a police report against an ex in 2018 after he assaulted her when she went to pick up some belongings from their home. It was soon after that, she got a text from the man she now knew was Sergeant Bob Semenchuk. And she and her friend wondered how the police officer got her phone number in the first place. I was like, yeah, I'm not sure if he got my number from when I did the report. I said, because I did leave my contact information with them, and then contacting me and gave me the name, J. Lewis.

And then she was like, that sounds really suspicious. I was like, yeah, that's what I was thinking. And then she was like, okay, well, what do you want to do? And I was like, I was like, I don't know. I'm Jana Pruden. This is in her defense, breach of trust. Episode 2, Bob, Bob Semenchuk. Yeah, the Starbucks is basically where I would go, you know, like after everything with,

it's the first place I went. It's a parking lot I go and sit in. Really? Yeah. When I'd talk to you or talk to anyone, it was my little safe place because, you know, parking lot, safe in my car. I could see everybody. And I would just go and sit and basically talk myself through everything. Carrie and I have known each other for more than 20 years.

We used to work together at the newspaper in Regina, and we stayed in touch when I moved to Edmonton. Carrie told me about this situation with Bob as it was unfolding and together we tried to make sense of what he'd done to her and why what would it mean to file a complaint against a senior police officer Carrie worried what people would think if it became public she worried about retribution from other officers she worried that even if she came forward

the police would just sweep it under the rug And what would Bob do? How would he react? Only a handful of people knew what was going on. Carrie hadn't even told her family. But she told me both as her friend and as a crime reporter. It was all really uncertain, really scary. And Carrie wanted me to have the information in case anything happened.

You know, when I started down this journey, like, I would, like, sit in my vehicle and just be... I was wrecked, you know, I was so scared. I was so scared that he was going to come out and find me and kill me. And I didn't end up in a landfill. Because if he could lie that good, I didn't know what he was capable of. And that was what I was scared of the most. And there's always this sort of David and Goliath type of battle. You know, like for me as an indigenous woman, as a Soto woman,

coming up against the police, speaking out against a decorated police officer. You know, I wasn't sure what would have. happened with that. I wasn't sure if they would be on my side. I wasn't sure. But I knew I just had to do something. Her friend with the police contacts was ready to help. She was like, well, let me make some calls if you want me to make some calls for you. And I was like, okay. And then she made some calls and she came back and she was like, here's a number. She said, there's somebody with police standards. Give them a call.

Tell them exactly what you told me, and they will look into it. And so that's how I first connected with Dean. Well, typically phone calls to my office would, you know, someone had a problem with an officer at a call where maybe the officer was rude, or they felt that the officer might have used excessive force in their arrest or something like that, that this was fundamentally different. That's Staff Sergeant Dean Yedlowski. He was head of the professional standard section at the Regina Police Service at the time.

Those are the police that investigate the police. You may have heard these units sometimes called Internal Affairs. What she was telling us was so out of the ordinary for a phone call from somebody to the police that, yeah, it was, I would say, pretty shocking initially. And I told him exactly. what had happened, how I had filed a police report. Two weeks later, I got a wrong number text, and the person said he was J. Lewis and he was a contractor, and that we had a friendship that lasted for a few years,

and he just recently contacted me again. And then he was like, okay, well, go and fill out this form online. He said, poke around and see what's happening. I was like, okay. And during this time, I was still texting with Jay because I didn't want to just stop in case he was suspicious. And so we just kept talking and he wanted me to go on WhatsApp

And so we went on, carried a conversations over to WhatsApp. I mean, obviously I knew Robert Semenchuk because we're not that big of a police service. So I knew who he was. I'd never worked with him. So I didn't have a lot of real personal knowledge. Evan Bray was the chief of police in Regina when Kerry filed her complaint. He's now retired and is the host of a talk radio show in Saskatoon. So, you know, as chief of police,

police, we would have regular weekly briefings with our professional standard section. They advised me that a new complaint had come in that morning. They hadn't even really had a chance to dig into it, but they talked about what the nature of the complaint was. It was a complaint about Robert Semenchuk, who was a sergeant at the time working in one of our plane closed units. And the only other thing that they said was that this appeared to be a complaint. about him, but it was not with regard to the execution of his duty.

After that first phone call, I tried to convince Carrie that we should meet in person and discuss it further. And then Dean called me back and said he wanted to set up a meeting. And so this was around February, like the first week or so in February. And I remember having a nightmare, waking up terrified, and phoning Dean and saying, never mind, I don't want to do this. Just I don't want to go forward with this. And he is like, can you talk to my coworker? He's like, before you make this decision?

And he's like, is it because you're scared? And I was like, yeah. He said, just talk to my coworker, okay? And I was like, no, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I was very adamant that I didn't want to do this. He said, just talk to my coworker. And if you still feel the same way, he said, then we'll stop.

And then I was like, okay. And then I talked to Alana. I do remember that day very well. It was early February of 2020. This is Sergeant Alanna Heiliger. She'd been in the Professional Standards Unit for a little over a year when the Seminchuk file landed on her desk. In retrospect, I would say I was shocked,

but at the time, I was just thinking, we have to look into this. We have to find out what happened. We wanted to look into his behavior on our records management system to confirm that he had searched carry, had looked up certain files or whatever. We call it an audit of our records management system, and we had to decide how to conduct those audits, whether it was a slice of time, you know, like what was his behavior during a particular week or going through and doing sort of spot checks, you know what I mean? Like what was he searching that week? What did he search on a one hour period a week before that or how long has this been going on? Also specific to Kerry, like when was the first time he searched her name? How many times did you click into her profile, that kind of thing?

What kind of reports might you have read about Carrie, you know, victim statements from previous files and that sort of thing? So a lot of that took time to develop and to confirm our suspicions. And they were looking for, they were basically saying, we think we need to do a bigger audit. We think we need to cast a bigger net because if this is truly a targeted way that he found this, random person, is there other victims out there? Are there other people that he has targeted to try and under false pretenses, right? Forge a relationship with people. And so it was pretty clear to us early on that we needed to take a bit of a wider swath to see if there were other people involved. What's involved in an audit? What does that actually look like for a police officer

to be audited? Yeah. So every time within the police service, every time you do any sort of a movement within the police databases, you leave an electronic footprint. To understand this investigation, I think it's important to know a bit about how the police database works and what's in it. Police in Regina use something called I-E-I-S or I's, that stands for integrated electronic information system. And basically it's a system where every time a report is taken, key information is linked to existing records. So the system is really powerful in terms of the connections that it makes. It's basically it links all these different people and places and items and vehicles,

addresses all together. What can you tell me about what you learned about how he was using this database? Yeah, I think that's where the, you know, the very disturbing elements of this case come together, because it was quickly determined a couple of things. There was a large number of files that he was accessing. I'll use the word inappropriately. It maybe seems light for given the scope of what we're talking about, but it was inappropriate access to files.

It was Alana who first saw that there was some weird patterns, well, a weird pattern where 95% of the person searches that he was doing were women. which is pretty atypical. Most of our people were searching tend to be males, or at least half. And a lot of women were searched repeatedly. And it wasn't necessarily names that were familiar to us, you know, as targets or, you know, suspects. When we looked at the names of the people and looked them up ourselves, there could have been very little police contact, you know, or someone was on our system

just because, like I say, they had a criminal record check five years earlier. And for some reason, he kept searching these females. So that was something that really stood out. And then diving deeper to see why he was searching these women. And I think that led to the first 15, 16 women that he was doing unauthorized searches on. Dean and Alana had discovered evidence that Bob searched more than a dozen women. for reasons that had nothing to do with police work. They had to stop him.

So on the, I think it was April 4th, 2023, is the day that we developed an operational plan to suspend Bob from RPS. We had to ensure he didn't have access to the system anymore. At that time, he was working at, RCJC. RCJC stands for Regina Children's Justice Center.

That's the unit that investigates child abuse. He wasn't there very long, but again, that was a concern as well. We needed to eliminate his contact with really anyone that was vulnerable.

We had some tactical concerns. We went to his workplace, you know, armed, not expecting a physical confrontation, but having that in the back of our minds, that that was a possibility. But the whole operational plan was, you know, a bit of, it was supposed to be a surprise to Bob. Before he could have time to delete information from his phone or make any kind of other plans, we would take that phone away from him and proceed with his suspension.

And that didn't go quite according to plan. Bob wasn't at work. He was actually at an appointment with a psychologist as part of the Safeguard Program, a regular mental health check-in for police officers. So when we finally found out from his supervisor where he was and we attended to the right building, it was very quick.

We basically came down the hall. He was in a room already, had his jacket off, and it was, hey, Bob, you need to come with us. The chief wants to speak to you. Don't take your jacket. I'll take your jacket. You know, the phone, we'll keep the phone. And come with us.

We're going down the hall to where the chief was to serve that notice of suspension. He just got to work. He was not wearing his firearm. His firearm was in his desk. That is a consideration that we often will think about with police officers because, you know, you just never know what's going on in their head and what their reaction is going to be. So he was not handcuffed because at that point there was no charge, there was no criminal charge.

However, he was made aware of the investigation. He was told that he was going to be suspended from work with pay, which is in line with how the police act works, but also told we were going to be seizing everything work-related, which included his phone. After the suspension was served in the room by the chief, we allowed Bob to meet with a representative from our association, that's our police union, meet with that person in private to discuss things, and the police representative, association representative, came out and asked if Bob could use his phone to contact his wife. And whether that's what he was intending to do with that phone,

or whether he was trying to wipe it or whatever, I don't know, but we did not allow him his phone back. And thankfully, you know, after a search warrant of his phone, it led to many more investigative leads. The investigation was bigger and more complex than the officers initially realized. In total, they estimate they did 80 to 100 audits, going back more than a decade.

I mean, sometimes by the end of the day, we just kind of look at each other, and we can't even say anything. What do you say, right? So I think that shock value was still there. Not disbelief of what information we were being told, but it kind of sinks in over time. Like, this is someone who's a police officer.

It's one of our coworkers. I can't believe this. It was all there once they went looking. There were logged searches on the police database, text messages on Bob's police-issued phone. And then there were the notebooks. While we were seizing the contents of his desk, we came across a number of coil books, so like notebooks, if you will. So it wasn't a police notebook. It was more like a coiled like you have today.

There were almost like cryptic notes in it that took the team a little bit of time to decide. Now, these notebooks contained a mix of work-related information, you know, police file numbers, names of suspects, appointments, some personal appointments. And in the corner of a lot of pages were some little notes that were, I mean, it was handwritten and it was difficult to read his writing. But we saw a pattern of, in the corner of a lot of the pages was a couple of names and maybe a phone number, and some other numbers. And it kept reoccurring throughout these notebooks. A female's name, a male name, just the first name. Maybe a couple different last names with lines drawn through them on the female and maybe a date of birth and then maybe a phone number or an address. And then

a couple of numbers that said 20, 22 or 18, 20 and pro M or something like that. that. And so seeing this pattern here of these notes that were really curious, we tried to figure out what exactly this was what it meant. And I think the next substantive development in the investigation was when we figured out those were potential contacts that Bob had made on his work phone and they amounted to over 200 and some individual women. Investigation had gone from Kerry to maybe 15 or 16 women. Now, with the information in these notebooks, Alana and Dean were looking at 200, even 250 women,

who'd been targeted by Bob. At some point, our investigators started reaching out to people to determine whether or not they'd had an interaction with Robert Semenchuk. That was definitely a very challenging part. of this investigation. We spent a considerable amount of time thinking about coming up with a plan on how we were going to approach this. I think the majority, if not all of the victims, were unaware that he had victimized them. They didn't know he was a police officer. They didn't know he had access their information. And so there's definitely some shock value to those things,

right? But we spent, you know, just within our team and with expertise of other employees at the police service coming up with a plan on how we're going to basically cold call people and say, you know, can you come in? I'm investigating something. I can't really tell you much about it. But I think you have some information that could help us. And I recognize that for many people that day, that was probably the worst day. They didn't tell me anything right away. They told me I was a witness to a crime and that I was going to go into this room.

They would be videotaping it. I racked my brains thinking, what did I see? Who do I know? What did my brother do? You know, like... I even said when I walked in the room and I looked around and I said, this is a dateline episode. Like, this is crazy.

That's next time on In Her Defense, Breach of Trust. In Her Defense is made by Kasha Mihailovich and me, Jana Pruden. Additional field recording by Amber Bracken. Sound design and mixing by David Crosby. Our executive editor is Angela Pichenza. Our theme song is Black Horses by Birdbelly. The narration for this season of In Her Defense was recorded. recorded by Omar Mualem at Huck Story Studios in Edmonton.

The feedback we receive about In Her Defense means a lot. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to get in touch and share their own experiences, or pass along tips. You can email me directly at J-P-R-U-D-E-N at globe and mail.com. Or find me online. Please also review the podcast and share it on your platforms or in your circles. We believe this story is really important, and you can help us get it out there. Thank you for listening.