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Rob Ford in 'crack cocaine' video scandal
A video that appears to show Toronto’s mayor smoking crack is being shopped around by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade.
This photo shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford with a man who, according to a source, is fatal gunshot victim Anthony Smith. The photo was given to the Toronto Star by the same person who later showed Star reporters a video in which Ford appears to be smoking crack cocaine.
The Star's Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle have seen the video in question. They explain what they saw.
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A cellphone video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine is being shopped around Toronto by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade.
Two Toronto Star reporters have viewed the video three times. It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches.
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“I’m f---ing right-wing,” Ford appears to mutter at one point. “Everyone expects me to be right-wing. I’m just supposed to be this great.…” and his voice trails off. At another point he is heard calling Trudeau a “fag.” Later in the 90-second video he is asked about the football team and he appears to say (though he is mumbling), “they are just f---ing minorities.”
The Star had no way to verify the authenticity of the video, which appears to clearly show Ford in a well-lit room. The Star was told the video was shot during the past winter at a house south of Dixon Rd. and Kipling Avenue. What follows is an account based on what both reporters viewed on the video screen. Attempts to reach the mayor and members of his staff to get comment on this story were unsuccessful.
How can you indicate what the person is actually doing or smoking?
Ford's lawyer
A lawyer retained by Ford, Dennis Morris, said that Thursday evening’s publication by the U.S.-based Gawker website of some details related to the video was “false and defamatory.” Morris told the Star that by viewing any video it is impossible to tell what a person is doing. “How can you indicate what the person is actually doing or smoking?” Morris said.
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Ford’s chief of staff, Mark Towhey, would not listen to questions by the Star on Thursday night and abruptly hung up when the Star called.
The video was taken on a smartphone by a person who said he has supplied crack cocaine to the mayor.
Throughout the video Ford’s eyes are half-closed. He lolls back in his chair, sometimes waving his arms around erratically. He raises a lighter in his hand at several points and moves it in a circle motion beneath the glass bowl of the pipe, then inhales deeply.
The Star reporters (Donovan and Doolittle) were shown the video on the evening of Friday, May 3, in the back of a car parked in an apartment complex at Dixon Rd. near Kipling Ave. in the north end of Etobicoke. The reporters were allowed to watch and listen to the video three times. After, both reporters separately made written notes of what they saw and heard. Both reporters, prior to watching the video, studied numerous city-hall-related videos of Ford and, to the best of the reporter’s abilities, they separately concluded the man in the video was Ford.
In the video, what appears to be afternoon sunlight is streaming through partially closed window blinds, lighting Ford’s face. The video ends with the ringing of a cellphone (it is not clear if it is the cellphone that is being used to video the scene). The ring tone, which is a song, startles the mayor, whose slitted eyes open a bit, and he is heard to say, “That phone better not be on.”
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The Star was approached with an offer to purchase the video shortly after the Star’s story on Ford’s removal from the Garrison Ball due to apparent intoxication of some sort. The story, published March 26 of this year, described a concern by unnamed associates and staffers at city hall that Ford had a substance abuse problem. Ford dismissed the Star story, called the Star “pathological liars” and invited the newspaper to sue him. Garrison Ball attendees interviewed by the Star did not say they smelled alcohol. One said, “He seemed either drunk, high or had a medical condition.”
After the story was published the Star was contacted by two separate people who purported to have information on Ford abusing crack cocaine.
One person, who described himself as an organizer in the Somali community, told the Star he had copies of a video that, he said, showed Ford smoking crack. This man was acting as a sort of broker for the person who had shot the video. What followed was a protracted discussion between the man and Star reporters. The broker said he represented two Somali men who had supplied crack cocaine to the mayor in the Dixon Rd. area. The Star was not able to verify those claims.
The man said his two associates (one had been present when the video was made and had done the filming) wanted “six figures for the video.” At another point he said they had originally wanted $1 million, but he had convinced them to lower the price. Asked why they were selling the video, the man said the two who claimed ownership of the video wanted to make a change in their lives and use the money to move out west to Calgary.
The Star did not pay money and did not obtain a copy of the video.
Initially, the Somali man who contacted the Star said he had information about “a Toronto politician.” When the Star met him the first time, he showed a photo of Ford dressed in sweatpants, standing in the driveway of a brick house with three other men. The one on the left in the picture had apparently been killed the previous week on King St. near the Loki Lounge. The man, with his strong forehead and distinctive jaw line, looked like Anthony Smith, 21, who indeed had been killed recently.
Over the last month the Star has had several meetings with the man who was acting as a broker, culminating with the May 3 meeting at the Dixon Rd. apartment complex.
The reporters had told the man that they wanted to see the video. A meeting was arranged. First, the reporters were told to drive to the parking lot of an Etobicoke strip mall. They were told to leave their bags and cellphones in their own cars and get in his. The drive lasted less than five minutes. They pulled into the parking lot of the Dixon Rd. highrise complex.
The man got out of his car and returned with his associate.
The associate, also Somali, was a man in his early to mid-20s. He looked nervous and was shaking slightly. He had thick scabs on his arm.
He pulled out an iPhone — he would not let the reporters hold it. At first he wouldn’t let the sound play, but then relented.
In a video clip less than two minutes long, an incoherent and rambling Mayor Rob Ford can clearly be seen smoking what appears to be crack cocaine.
He is sitting on a chair holding a glass pipe with a blackened top and a lighter. Ford is the only person on the video, but there are at least two other people in the room — one, a man who said he is his dealer, secretly recording him, and another, an anonymous voice asking him questions.
The footage begins with the mayor mumbling. His eyes are half-closed. He waves his arms around erratically. A man’s voice tells him he should be coaching football because that’s what he’s good at.
Ford agrees and nods his head, bobbing on his chair.
He says something like “Yeah, I take these kids . . . minorities” but soon he rambles off again.
Ford says something like: “Everyone expects me to be right-wing, I’m . . .” and again he trails off.
At one point he raises the lighter and moves it in a circle motion beneath the pipe, inhaling deeply.
Next, the voice raises the name of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The man says he can’t stand him and that he wants to shove his foot up the young leader’s “ass so far it comes out the other end.”
Ford nods and bobs on his chair and appears to say, “Justin Trudeau’s a fag.”
The man taping the mayor keeps the video trained on him. Then the phone rings. Ford looks at the camera and says something like “that better not be on.”
The phone shuts off.
Another day, another Rob Ford scandal.
Oops, make that another scandalous allegation.
It’s not marijuana use, this time. Nor a conveniently forgotten DUI conviction.
Neither was he embarrassingly intoxicated while on official duty representing the city at another public event.
No, this time it is crack cocaine.
At least, that is the charge, the accusation. And we do know how the mayor of Toronto responds to any and all allegation of misdeed or wrongdoing — with forceful, belligerent denial.
The last time there was a media stink bomb over claims he was asked to leave the military ball because he appeared out of it and offended some of the organizers, he blasted the messenger.
The Toronto Star, the mayor’s favourite sparring partner, and its investigative team of reporters were “pathological liars” for reporting this, Ford thundered. And, in a non-sequitur, he urged the Star to sue him.
No, after you Alphonse.
As often is the case, the media isn’t there when stuff happens; reporters show up afterwards to give audience to the witnesses and record their accounts of history for posterity.
Such is the case with the latest salacious claim that a cellphone recorded a video of the mayor smoking cocaine.
At least, it looks like the mayor. Unmistakable, in a crystal clear video of particularly high quality, The Star’s Robyn Doolittle reports. She and lead investigator Kevin Donovan viewed the video three times, just to be sure.
The video evidence shows the Ford-like figure, lighter in hand, holding a glass pipe, moving glass pipe to his lips . . . big inhale . . . exhale . . . smoke comes out.
To those who have heard Ford and seen him stumble and slur in the past, it looks and sounds like our slurring, stumbling mayor.
One picture of him with a confrere who, allegedly, was gunned down a short time after the picture was taken, shows him in familiar clothes, looking much like the sweat top he wore while exercising at a neighbourhood park last year.
The picture was supplied by a source to bolster bona fides and attest to credibility.
Toronto didn’t account for this when citizens elected the city’s 64th mayor in 2010. They knew Rob Ford was rough around the edges, a bit uncouth, unconventional and lacking finesse. But reckless and out of control — unable to stay out of trouble, day after day, lacking a filter that protects against stupidity?
How is it possible to be so unlucky?
Why would so many people line up to tell lies on the mayor?
A councillor ally claims he was intoxicated at a military ball and the mayor swears to high heaven he was not; and the media has no eyeball evidence of their own.
A former mayoral candidate says he grabbed her ass during a picture taking session in public, and again we have no video evidence so it can’t be proven.
Now we have a video, but the people behind the camera are, y’know, alleged drug dealers. And, as you know, they can’t be trusted. And videos can be altered. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday offered that defence early Friday as reporters and city councillors massed outside the mayor’s office at city hall, waiting for some official word.
Past experience informs us how this will play out.
Already, the script is being written.
Someone claiming to be Ford’s lawyer has warned the claims are false and defamatory. Ford, leaving his Etobicoke home Friday morning, blames the Star. The rest of the media runs along breathlessly — he said, she said.
Toronto has often been criticized as a too-sleepy town, Presbyterian and efficient and clean.
We didn’t have to wash away all of those attributes, at once, with the election of one mayor.
Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca
Rob Ford crack scandal: The mayor should speak up
Speak up Rob Ford. “Ridiculous” won’t cut it. Another sighing swipe at the Toronto Star won’t cut it.
Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Mayor Rob Ford leaves his home on May 17, 2013, after published reports said a video appears to show Ford smoking crack cocaine.
Speak up Rob Ford.
“Ridiculous” won’t cut it.
Another sighing swipe at the Toronto Star won’t cut it.
Lawyer, political allies, acolytes who usually have the mayor’s back in times of turbulence and scandal — Lord knows those have come fast and furious — were doing most of the talking Friday morning.
But the man himself was a fleeting figure amidst the most shocking crisis of his public life, captured by cameras for mere seconds as he left his home, and laughing off the smoking gu — uh, pipe.
Doing so again upon his arrival at city hall, wading through a phalanx of media camped outside his office —all see-no-scandal scoff and shrug of the shoulders. “It’s ridiculous guys.” And a ha-ha.
Ford allegedly smoked crack cocaine in the company of purported drug dealers.
Ford allegedly smoked crack cocaine in the past six months.
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Yet, apart from the brief wave-off — ridiculous, Star up to its usual pick-on-Ford agenda — Toronto’s mayor has yet to muscularly or seriously refute the story. Nor had his Pancho, Doug, emerged to lead the counter-attack in defence, which is the usual pattern adopted in big trouble crunches. Indeed, Doug Ford cancelled a pre-scheduled noon appearance on CP24.
What could possibly be more urgent for the mayor than to vigorously and credibly renounce the story that broke originally on the U.S.-based Gawker website?
Who would not, in his situation, have stood on his doorstep and howled: Lies!
Whether the public would believe such a denial is another matter.
Whether what’s apparently obvious to the naked eye can be believed is also debatable.
Let’s just say, however, that the 90-second footage viewed by two Star reporters would not come as a staggering revelation in certain quarters of this city, where scuttlebutt about Ford’s alleged drug use has long been a subject of whispered conversation. New agencies apart from the Star have spent months chasing similar allegations.
Ford left his home shortly after 10 a.m., with media at city hall eagerly awaiting his arrival. The mayor’s press secretary would say only that he wasn’t in a position to comment at the time.
It had been a strange morning of reporting and non-reporting.
The eye-popping story had been posted on the Star’s website late Thursday, yet few media organizations — which typically piggy-back on the news broken by others — even made mention of it throughout the night: Nothing on all-news radio updates, little on newspaper websites that continually update content. Not even “the Toronto Star reports that…” By late morning, the National Post still wasn’t mentioning it.
Jitteriness over libel implications is only scant justification for the clear reluctance to address a story of seismic proportions unfolding right under everyone’s nose. Surely there was more going on here than media lawyers tugging on the reins. And of course, there’s no knowing whether any other news source had seen the video as well; they could have been operating out of complete ignorance.
However, the stunning allegation was already out there, on the front page of the Toronto Star, reported by two journalists who’d watched the video three times. This newspaper cannot verify the video’s authenticity, it’s true. But to shirk from reporting even what was already in the public domain — to shrink from reporting on the reporting — was spectacularly lame.
We’ve seen this before, though, haven’t we?
The modus operandi has been well established: Don’t cross this administration or there will be consequences.
At an eerily quiet city hall, only a handful of usual suspects — from the pro and anti Ford rumps — would address the grenade tossed at the mayor by Gawker.
“I don’t know what to say at this point,” said Councillor Doug Holyday. “Certainly we all know that videos can be altered and we certainly know that drug dealers can’t be trusted.”
And certainly we know that the word of drug dealers hasn’t been credible when, say, alleging in court that they’ve been the victim of shakedowns by Toronto cops.
Holyday said he continues to have complete confidence in Ford, though that might change if the crack-use images can be substantiated.
Meanwhile, knee-jerk Ford critic Councillor Adam Vaughan was babbling away about the issues he preferred to address — including the fate of Toronto’s waterfront, casinos and an island airport expansion.
“He’s a bad mayor because he makes bad decisions.”
Well, there’s a one-size-fits-all condemnation.
The proven and unproven: Drugs, booze, public spectacles, private scandals, endless controversies and embarrassments.
On Friday, a tremor shook Toronto. And it wasn’t just that earthquake.
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