Carlo Telechea, 28, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to the aggravated assault of Sgt. Anil Singh, and to disarming a peace officer.
A B.C. man who was caught on camera violently attacking a Vancouver police patrol sergeant in August 2021, received a sentence much shorter than the Crown was asking for, and one the Vancouver Police Union says sends a troubling message about the value placed on officer safety.
Carlo Telechea, 28, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to the aggravated assault of Sgt. Anil Singh, and to disarming a peace officer.
“Mr. Telechea exploded up at Sgt. Singh and began attacking him,” B.C. Supreme Court Justice Wendy A. Baker wrote in her reasons for sentence.
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Around 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 17, 2021, Singh was responding to a call about a person trespassing in a downtown Vancouver hotel lobby and refusing to leave, when he ended up fighting for his life and being beaten with his own baton.
CCTV footage entered as exhibits during an August 2024 sentencing hearing shows Telechea acting in an “aggressive and confrontational manner” towards the hotel’s security guard and front desk clerk before Singh arrived.
When Telechea was asked to leave, he told staff to call the cops.
Once the desk clerk calls police, Telechea can be seen lying down on the couch.
When Singh entered the lobby of the GEC Granville Suites Hotel minutes later and went to wake the person up, security video captured Telechea immediately punching, kicking and kneeing Singh before pulling the officer’s baton from his hands and swinging it like a baseball bat at his head.
The veteran VPD officer was forced to shoot Telechea in order to stop the 30-second assault.
“It was a hard thing to watch,” said Canadian Police Association (CPA) president Tom Stamatakis.
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Crown prosecutors sought a total sentence of six years in prison for Telechea.
Defence counsel suggested a conditional sentence of two years less a day, including house arrest with strict conditions for the first six months, followed by three years of probation.
Justice Baker sentenced Telechea to two years less one day in jail and three years of probation.
With credit for time spent in custody in the months following the assault, Telechea had just over one year, or 382 days, left to serve when he was sentenced on Oct. 18.
“I think it sends the wrong message,” Stamatakis told Global News in an interview.
The CPA, which represents 60,000 police personnel across Canada, said the sentence imposed does not adequately address denunciation and deterrence, and risks demoralizing law enforcement officers.
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“He’s received a life sentence because he’s still struggling to recover from the injuries he sustained as a result of this assault,” Stamatakis said of Sgt. Singh.
“Yet, this offender gets sentenced to two years less a day and then he moves on with his life.”
The maximum sentence for the aggravated assault of a peace officer in Canada is 14 years while disarming an officer is punishable by up to five years.
In this case, Justice Baker said she also had to take into account the fact that Telechea is an Indigenous offender.
While the judge found it aggravating that “Telechea perpetrated a sustained, unprovoked assault where he could have walked away but instead escalated the violence,” she acknowledged his guilty pleas and expression of genuine sorrow and remorse for his actions as mitigating factors.
“Mr. Telechea has lived a very difficult life, which included family violence, drug addiction, and alcoholism personally and on the part of his family members, poverty, dislocation, deaths of close family members, and many of the identified Gladue factors,” Justice Baker stated.
The court heard Telechea’s father was incarcerated when he was born while his mother suffered from severe addiction and died of a drug overdose when he was 11.
As a member of Alberta’s Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Telechea’s young life was very troubled.
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He began drinking alcohol, smoking cannabis, skipping school and fighting at age 15 and was kicked out of his grandparents’ home two years later.
In 2015, the court heard, Telechea sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl and was sentenced to two years in prison.
At the time, he was diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and started using methamphetamine.
The court heard that between the ages of 22 and 25 Telechea engaged in regular drinking and drug use and was charged in various jurisdictions for crimes associated with his drug addiction.
Since entering the Into Action Recovery house in July 2022, Telechea has started to turn his life around.
The court heard Telechea had complied with house and bail conditions prior to his sentence, was employed full-time as a plumber, and had been sober for two years.
Defence counsel argued Telechea was experiencing psychosis as a result of drug ingestion and did not appreciate what he was doing at the time of the assault.
Crown submitted it was more likely his high level of intoxication disinhibited him and fuelled his aggression toward Sgt. Singh.
Justice Baker said she accepted Telechea deeply regrets his actions which led to this conviction, and has made significant progress in addressing his addiction and antisocial behaviour. “He is on the path to becoming a prosocial, contributing member of society,” she wrote in her decision.
While she found Telechea knew Sgt. Singh was a police officer when he attacked him, Justice Baker also accepted that “he was severely intoxicated and under the effects of drugs, including methamphetamine, at the time.”
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When asked if Telechea was lucky to be alive given Singh was justified in using potentially lethal force, Stamatakis replied, “100 per cent.”
“If those bullets would have struck in a different part of the suspect’s body, then he could have potentially died as a result.”
Court heard Telechea, who suffered non-lethal gunshot wounds according to the Independent Investigations Office of BC, presented a letter of apology to Singh.
“If he was actually apologetic or remorseful my question becomes why did you not read it to me when I was in court,” asked Singh in an interview with Global News.
“Why did you choose to wait til I was gone to introduce it? So I don’t think it was sincere, I think it was all part of the defence strategy to mitigate any sort of sentence.”
Telechea’s legal counsel did not respond to an interview request from Global News.
Assaults against VPD members have been decreasing year over year since Singh was attacked.
Statistics provided by Vancouver police show 147 incidents reported in 2022, 136 in 2023 and 122 last year.
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Still, the CPA said many assaults go unreported as officers believe the perpetrators will face little to no consequences.
“The prevailing attitude is well, I’m not going to report it because nothing is going to happen,” Stamatakis told Global News.
The Vancouver Police Union (VPU) said an officer is assaulted every three days in the city.
Singh said he’s haunted by survivor’s guilt, knowing many other law enforcement officers across the country do not live to share their stories.
“From my perspective, I was fortunate,” Singh said. “I actually believe this individual wanted to kill me and I was able to survive. But during my recovery 12 of my brothers and sisters didn’t survive.”
In a Feb. 19 letter to members obtained by Global News, the union said the sentence handed to Singh’s attacker “fails to reflect the severity of the crime,” noting it’s crucial the justice system imposes penalties that adequately reflect the gravity of offences against those who serve and protect.
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“Appropriate penalties are not only essential for ensuring justice but also for deterring future attacks and maintaining public confidence in our legal system,” read the VPU letter.
On Nov. 13, the Crown filed a provisional Notice of Appeal against the sentence given to Telechea.
At the time, the BC Prosecution Service (BCPS) said a decision as to whether to continue with the appeal would be made once the reasons for the sentence and relevant court transcripts were reviewed.
The BCPS has since confirmed that on Jan. 17, Crown informed the court the appeal was abandoned, and the court granted the order dismissing the Crown’s sentence appeal as abandoned.