One night in June, three masked men were lurking around the suburban home of a Toronto prison manager. One was armed with a gun and had orders to kill the manager, investigators say.
The hit men went by the house north of Toronto three times over 36 hours, eventually running headlong into the police. It was unclear why officers were there. In a dramatic takedown captured on helicopter surveillance footage, officers chased the men, who crashed their blue sedan into the prison manager’s work vehicle parked outside as they tried to get away.
The arrests of the three men, who have each been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, the police said, set in motion a seven-month investigation that unraveled a network of police officers who have been accused of participating in organized criminal activity and drug trafficking.
As investigators pieced together the events leading up to the crime against the prison manager, it became clear, investigators say, that a Toronto police officer, Constable Timothy Barnhart, had unlawfully gained access to confidential information about the target of the hit men.
Investigators say they believe that he passed that information along to the criminal group that organized the attempted assassination. That suspicion, in turn, made it clear to investigators that there was much more going on. The revelations have rocked the Toronto Police Service, a force of 8,500 that handles some of the country’s most complex urban policing issues in its largest, most sprawling city, including gun violence and car thefts.
On Thursday, Constable Barnhart and seven other officers, including a father and son, from Canada’s largest metropolitan police force were charged in connection with the investigation. The officers, one of whom is retired, are facing charges of criminal corruption, bribery, drug trafficking, harassment and unauthorized access to personal information.
Other than the officers, an additional 19 people were arrested.
“This is a painful and unsettling moment,” Chief Myron Demkiw of the Toronto Police Service told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. “Organized crime is corrosive. That it infected our service is unacceptable,” he added.
“You will answer for your actions in a court of law,” Chief Demkiw said.
The investigation began in June 2025, after the prison manager’s home was targeted, police said. More details about why the hit men went to the prison manager’s home were not immediately released, but Deputy Chief Ryan Hogan of the York Regional Police, the agency that is leading the investigation, said he had been targeted for doing his job with “complete integrity.” He provided no further details.
Investigators say they believe that Constable Barnhardt, 56, had obtained the prison manager’s address and other confidential information from internal databases, said Deputy Chief Hogan. The York agency is responsible for policing across the 10 municipalities north of Toronto.
Aerial footage taken by police helicopter on that June night shows the hit men ramming a sedan into the victim’s work vehicle as officers closed in. The prison manager, who was not named during the news conference, is a unit commander at the Toronto South Detention Center, a maximum-security prison in the city’s west end.
Addresses that investigators say Constable Barnhardt illicitly obtained became the sites of extortions, robberies and shootings after having been shared with organized crime figures.
One such figure, Brian Da Costa, bribed the police in exchange for their help in preventing the shutdown of illegal cannabis dispensary operations, investigators say. Mr. Da Costa, who investigators say was exporting drugs to crime groups in Europe, was arrested in January and has been charged with fentanyl and cannabis trafficking.
Three of the officers, including Constable Barnhardt, are also charged with trafficking cocaine. One officer, John Madeley Sr., 55, who retired last year, and his son, John Madeley Jr., 29, are facing charges in connection with unauthorized access to a police computer and breach of trust.
More than 300 officers were involved in the investigation, called Project South.
“The investigators involved held a mirror to the face of the criminal justice system and to our policing institution to uncover the truth,” Deputy Chief Hogan said.
“Any officer working with organized crime deserves to be thrown in jail,” Olivia Chow, the Toronto mayor, told reporters at a separate news briefing. “We have to get to the bottom of how this could happen,” she said, adding that she supported the police chief’s calls for an independent review of the case by a provincial watchdog.
Clayton Campbell, the president of the Toronto Police Association, the union, said he was “disturbed by the allegations” but did not comment on the investigation.
Vjosa Isai is a reporter for The Times based in Toronto, where she covers news from across Canada.
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