“Want To Know Why It's So Hard for Cops To Be ‘Good Apples'”: Whistleblower Ex-Cop Explains In A Viral Twitter Thread

In the wake of the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement, more and more people are coming forward to unveil the flaws of the policing system. Ex-cop and former undercover police officer Paul Manning has experienced the harsh reality of working in law enforcement firsthand.

In a now-viral Twitter thread, Paul recounted an episode from 2007, when he was assisting a call with an officer he’d never met before. “Right in front of me, he broke a kid's nose with a punch. The septum was clearly deviated,” Paul started off the thread. He went on to detail how the policing system dealt with him just like they do with all officers who tried to do the right thing. Paul said that he “used this story because it showed every step of a system used to demoralize anyone who would report wrongdoing.” But as the thread evolves, it turns out, this is just a tip of the iceberg in what Paul calls “a massive corruption scandal.”

More info: Twitter | Wikipedia

Paul Manning, a former Hamilton police officer in Ontario, Canada, worked undercover targeting organized crime and the members of Musitano crime family. He spent over a year living in the community and engaging in criminal activity.

According to his Wikipedia page, the operation was compromised due to an intelligence breach suffered by the Ontario Provincial Police back in the late 2006. In a 2015 statement, Paul stated he was nearly killed after his cover was blown. He also alleged his identity was revealed to a crime family by a high-ranking Hamilton officer.

Paul was diagnosed with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder in 2013 and determined unable to work. CBC reported that he filed a lawsuit in 2016 seeking $6.75 million in damages “for what he describes as irreversible damage to his mental health in how he was treated by the service while he worked undercover and afterward.”