Crown won’t prosecute some charges laid in Project South police corruption investigation

Crown lawyers have narrowed the scope of charges they’ll prosecute against eight of the accused in the sweeping police corruption and organized crime investigation known as Project South.

Earlier this month, CBC News reported that prosecutors decided to proceed by direct indictment in the cases of 13 of those charged. That means the cases will skip a preliminary inquiry, typically used in criminal cases to determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to proceed with a trial, and head directly to trial in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice.

Superior court indictments filed for eight of those accused list 33 fewer charges against them than what they were originally charged with by police earlier this year. Screening and streamlining charges in this way is a normal part of the prosecution process to ensure the Crown pursues the best case it can, according to current and former prosecutors speaking generally to CBC News.

All but one of the Toronto cops charged in Project South headed directly to trial

“You see many cases where the police lay lots of charges and the Crown only ends up prosecuting a couple of them — that’s not to say that those charges aren’t provable — but the Crown sort of picks its best case,” said Ian Bulmer, vice-president of the Ontario Crown Attorneys’ Association.

“It’s exercising this sort of independent, quasi-judicial power to make sure that the best cases and the best shape of cases make it through to a system that’s under stress.”

Project South began in June 2025 when York Regional Police thwarted an alleged plot to kill a senior corrections officer at Toronto South Detention Centre. 

While investigating that alleged conspiracy, York police discovered that Toronto police Const. Timothy Barnhardt had allegedly shared confidential information about the senior correctional officer with a civilian, Brian Da Costa. Police have then accused Da Costa of providing that information to others charged in the alleged murder plot.

Barnhardt and Da Costa will each be prosecuted on seven fewer charges going forward. The police constable was originally facing 17 charges, and Da Costa was facing 16. Now Barnhardt is down to 10 charges on his indictment and Da Costa to nine, according to the court documents.

The majority of their abandoned charges concern drug trafficking, alongside conspiracy to accept a bribe and conspiracy to falsely accuse a person.

Barnhardt and Da Costa are still accused of accepting and giving a bribe to a peace officer, conspiracy to obstruct justice, trafficking police uniforms, unauthorized use of police computers and other drug offences. 

They both remain in custody. None of the charges against them have been tested in court.

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In a statement, Da Costa’s lawyer Craig Bottomley said, “I am a big believer in focused litigation. We are pleased that the Crown has taken very reasonable steps to narrow the issues before the court.” Barnhardt’s lawyer declined to comment.

The Ministry of the Attorney General told CBC News the original charges against these accused have not yet been stayed or withdrawn. 

Bulmer says charges that aren’t included on an indictment are, for practical purposes, dead because the Crown has chosen not to prosecute them. 

Criminal defence lawyer and former Crown attorney Reyam Zager says there are many reasons why prosecutors may decide not to pursue a charge laid by police. Those include if there’s no reasonable prospect of conviction, to make sure charges aren’t confusing for a jury and to avoid delays that could impact the prosecution. 

“It may simply be a situation where the Crown says, ‘OK, we’ve overcharged with too many different types of counts for the same type of offending behaviour,’ ” Zager said. 

“We know that we’re going to have to choose … so why don’t we make that decision now? Why don’t we just proceed on the one we’re most confident we can prove and probably the one that’s going to be the most serious instead of overburdening the indictment with various counts.”

If similar allegations are grouped together under a single charge, Zager says that doesn’t typically mean the accused would face a lesser sentence if convicted as the judge would still consider all of the offending behaviour.

The other six accused in Project South who are facing fewer charges on their indictments include two other police officers charged in the investigation, a retired constable and civilian Elwyn Satanowksy. 

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Satanowsky is accused of arranging shootings connected with Project South. Some of the initial charges related to those shootings are no longer being pursued and others have been consolidated into a single charge. Instead of 12 charges, he now faces four.  

All of the accused whose cases are proceeding by direct indictment are expected to make their first appearance in Superior Court in Toronto on Wednesday.