A veteran officer of nearly three decades, Madeley had retired from Toronto police in spring 2025 while facing an internal disciplinary proceeding for professional misconduct. He now stands accused of working with an alleged violent criminal enforcer known as “Frank the Tank” and distributing confidential information illegally obtained from police databases.

In fact, Hood’s March 6 court appearance on behalf of Madeley’s lawyer took place just over a month after he retired from Durham Regional Police Service, effectively ending the force’s efforts to have him fired over 36 counts of professional misconduct.

Hood’s presence at the Project South court hearing has renewed focus on the disciplinary case that expedited the end of his own policing career, a complex yarn with dueling narratives.

As Durham police allege, Hood interfered with an investigation he was not assigned to, eventually causing threat and extortion charges to be dropped against a longtime player in the GTA towing industry.

As Hood tells it, the case against him misconstrued honest police work and served as a form of reprisal for alleging corruption amongst OPP officers to a supervisor years prior.

“I have enjoyed a long, discipline-free career with several commendations, including one from the OPP Commissioner, for my hard work. This is not how people should be treated. Improperly using the discipline system for a personal vendetta or some form of revenge is clearly wrong,” Hood told the Star in March.

Hood’s January retirement meant the disciplinary proceedings against him died on the vine. In the absence of a decision, the circumstances of his alleged misconduct remain unclear. Meanwhile, new questions have emerged about the former detective’s quick conversion into a licensed paralegal.

Those questions alone are enough to shake the public’s trust and confidence in the system, one expert says.

“This person now has this cloud hanging over their head,” said Patrick Watson, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Toronto.

“For me, this just underscores the necessity to actually air these allegations out, for both this former officer and the public.”

Sworn in in 1998, Hood spent the first decade of his career as what he describes as a “flatfoot road cop.”

It wasn’t until the late 2000s that he was first confronted with the dark side of the towing industry. A woman turned to Durham police for help retrieving her car from a tow lot. The company that towed her vehicle following a collision on Highway 401 had stopped returning her calls. Some predatory operators, Hood would soon learn, would seize high-end cars from owners in need of a tow and demand exorbitant fees for their return, or worse, dismantle them for parts.

That case grew into a passion. Hood began stopping trucks and checking paperwork outside of his general duties. Over the next couple of years, he “dedicated his career to knowing who’s who in the zoo.”

“I discovered all kinds of things because nobody was stopping these guys,” he told the Star.

Hood earned praise for his efforts in the years that followed, particularly in relation to a 2021 seizure of more than 50 vehicles from a Brampton auto body shop that saw two people and two companies charged. That same year, the Ontario Provincial Police tapped Hood to join its newly formed towing task force.

The task force’s mandate, Hood says, “was to root out and investigate organized crime within the towing industry by conducting in depth projects.” For too long, Hood said, bad actors had operated in plain sight with little fear of consequence. The task force, Hood hoped, would hold them to account before the justice system.

But it wasn’t long before Hood found himself the subject of a handful of legal proceedings.

The same seizure of cars he was praised for in 2021 became the subject of a $1.8-million lawsuit later that year, claiming he’d failed to show proper warrants. The charges laid had been dropped, the claim alleged, but the seized property was never returned.

When reached by the Star, lawyers for the plaintiffs declined to comment on the case as it remains before the courts.

Hood was also named as a defendant in a lawsuit launched by Scarborough business woman Yalini Ruthiran, the wife of longtime GTA tow operator Mano Subramaniam.

In the lawsuit, Ruthiran claims Hood derailed her plans to open a chain of cannabis retailers in 2021 by telling a licensing official “fabricated allegations” that she and Subramanian were “deeply involved in organized crime.”

The lawsuit is ongoing. Lawyers for Ruthiran and Subramaniam did not respond to the Star’s request for comment.

In a statement of defence, Hood argued his comments were not made in bad faith and “the content of the alleged communications … were true or substantially true.”

Some of the most serious allegations of wrongdoing came from Hood’s own police service.

Durham police alleged that while acting as part of the provincial task force, he interfered in an investigation into Subramaniam.

At the time, Subramaniam was embroiled in conflict with another purported tow faction leader, Jencikumar Joseph.

According to Hood, Joseph contacted him in July 2023 to report that he had been threatened by Subramaniam, and offered to speak to police about wider violence in the towing industry.

Hood says Joseph ended the interview by telling him and another officer that he did not wish to lay charges against Subramaniam. Durham police claim this never occurred.

Durham moved ahead with an investigation into Subramaniam. In November 2023, Hood, whose role on the provincial task force meant he was not involved in the probe, became aware of a plan to arrest the tow lot owner and, at the last minute, urged officers to call it off, citing an undefined risk to a confidential informant.

Hood claims he raised this concern with Durham investigators and his supervisor at the OPP, and shared with the Star screengrabs of an undated text exchange that appears to show his supervisor agreeing with the strategy of delaying the arrest. Durham police deny this, however, alleging Hood refused to explain to supervisors at both services what that risk entailed.

Officers went ahead and charged Subramaniam on Dec. 1. It was at that point, Durham police alleged, that Hood went around the lead investigator, raising his concerns to the local Crown’s office.

Prosecutors agreed to review the case and the charges against Subramaniam were stayed in January 2024. Hood was suspended that same month and ultimately charged with 36 counts of professional misconduct.

In June 2025, Joseph, the operator who first offered the interview to Hood, was arrested and charged alongside 20 individuals that police allege made up the “upper echelon” of a criminal organization, attempting to illicit control over the GTA towing industry.

To this day, Hood claims the investigation and disciplinary proceedings against him were poisoned by prejudice and improperly carried out.

“It was not an investigation,” he told the Star in March. “It was a road to a destination that had already been decided.”

In early 2025, he filed a motion to have the disciplinary charges against him dropped altogether, alleging that his OPP-issued laptop that contained key evidence showing his supervisors agreed that Subramaniam’s arrest posed risk to his confidential informant, had been destroyed before the correspondence could be extracted.

While the tribunal found that the laptop in question had in fact been destroyed, it found no “factual information that information relevant to the case was on the computer.”

Hood did not testify at the tribunal or attend his disciplinary hearing.

Instead, the former detective’s May 2024 interview with Durham’s professional standards was played out in its entirety at the two-day hearing. In those recordings, Hood claimed the investigation was a form of reprisal for levying his own allegations of corruption against three of his colleagues from his time with the OPP-led task force in 2021, which he says went ignored by his OPP supervisor.

When asked for evidence of his claims, Hood said it was destroyed with his OPP laptop.

Hood’s claims that supervisors ignored his reports of corruption were not litigated as part of the proceeding. When reached by the Star, Hood’s former supervisor at the OPP declined to comment. Spokesperson for the service, Gosia Pusio, could not locate a complaint lodged by Hood to the supervisor in question.

“There is no evidence to substantiate the misconduct allegations Hood has made,” said Pusio.

The day after his two-day disciplinary hearing, before a verdict was issued, Hood retired. His departure meant that Durham police no longer had jurisdiction to prosecute him for the alleged professional misconduct.

Between June 1, 2023 and January 2026, Durham police spent a total of $51,346 pursuing disciplinary action against him, according to records obtained through freedom of information legislation. Hood says the costs incurred by the Durham police association for his defence surpassed $200,000.

Less than a month later, Hood was granted a paralegal licence. It was a natural return to the profession he had nearly three decades ago, he says, before he became a cop.

When reached by the Star, spokesperson for the Law Society of Ontario, Jennifer Wing, did not delve into the specifics of Hood’s application. Hood told the Star he had disclosed the former allegations to provincial regulators, who took no issue.

“Decisions about how to proceed with licensing applications are made on a case-by-case basis and take into consideration factors including the facts revealed by an investigation, whether the Law Society can prove the conduct in issue, and whether it is in the public interest to hold a hearing,” Wing said.

On March 3, Hood addressed a virtual courtroom on behalf of Sandy Khehra, counsel for Project South accused John Madeley Sr.

When reached by the Star, Khehra, who represented Hood in his disciplinary proceedings, clarified that the former detective was not employed by his firm and instead had been contracted to oversee “basic adjournments,” a common cost-saving practice among criminal defence lawyers.

Khehra, who frequently represents Durham officers in disciplinary proceedings, said Hood will never appear on any matters related to his former police service.

Still, Hood’s appearance in the high-profile case so soon after he himself faced police misconduct allegations is enough to raise eyebrows, according to the University of Toronto’s Watson.

It’s not just a factual basis of bias, “it’s the perception” says Watson. “If you can draw their character into doubt, then it fundamentally undermines trust in the system.”