Councillor Jaye Robinson renews calls for the mayor to “get help,” while outgoing deputy Doug Holyday says the incident was blown “out of proportion.”
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JAIME CASTILLO PHOTO
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford seen posing for photo with Jaime Castillo on Friday evening at Taste of the Danforth.
Councillor Jaye Robinson is renewing her call for Mayor Rob Ford to temporarily step down and “get help” after watching videos that showed a reportedly slurring Ford at the Taste of the Danforth festival on Friday night.
“Watching the videos, there’s no question the mayor exhibited questionable behaviour. For the good of the city, and the good of the mayor, he needs to take a break and get help,” Robinson (Ward 25, Don Valley West) said in an interview.
“There’s no doubt he has personal issues. There’s a pattern,” said Robinson, a member of Ford’s executive committee until he replaced her in June. “Many of us had hoped he had dealt with the issues but obviously, looking at those videos, that’s not the case.”
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Ford refused to make himself available to the media Monday. On his radio show on Sunday, he acknowledged that he consumed alcohol on the night of the festival, but he rejected the suggestion that he acted inappropriately.
Ford was filmed and photographed standing alone near his parked Cadillac Escalade. He was driven home to Etobicoke at the end of the night by a member of his staff. But he has not said where he had his drinks.
The first of the videos in which Ford appears to be slurring his words was taken as Ford started to walk north toward Danforth Ave.
The videos triggered yet another spate of international media coverage related to Ford’s behaviour. Robinson first called for Ford to step aside in June, after he refused to fully address questions about a video, viewed by two Toronto Star reporters, that appears to show the mayor smoking crack cocaine. He denied smoking crack and said no such video exists.
Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, public works committee chair and a Ford ally, said Monday that “a mayor needs to act like a mayor.”
“There have been a number of examples, by not just (Ford) but other members of council, where they’ve shown bad judgment. And council needs to show better judgment,” said Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East).
“We have to show leadership, and we have to lead by example.”
Outgoing deputy mayor Doug Holyday, who spoke to the media in Ford’s place, said the videos were “inconclusive.” He said Ford’s activities are regularly blown “out of proportion.”
“Everything he does is scrutinized in a way that no other politician has ever had before, that I know of. And I just hope it doesn’t take a toll on him,” Holyday said.
He added: “Even if he did have a couple drinks, as long as he wasn’t out of line, as long as he wasn’t driving his vehicle while he was drinking or anything like that — he’s human like the rest of us.”
Ford said Sunday that he drove himself to the festival, had some beer and later got a lift home. Greenwood Ave. residents first spotted him, allegedly slurring and unsteady on his feet, next to his Cadillac Escalade around 9:20 p.m., a few blocks south of Danforth Ave.
“Did I have a couple of beers? Absolutely, I had a couple of beers. But you know what, I had a good time,” Ford said.
In the videos, Ford, unaccompanied by aides, posed for photos and made statements including: “We’re going to go up to the party, man, let’s go.”
The Friday incident was the latest in a series involving Ford:
Rob Ford did drugs, partied with escort on St. Patrick’s Day, police document alleges
The mayor’s wild night in his city hall office and a downtown pub featured racist and sexual taunts, staff told police in interviews recorded in the documents released Tuesday.
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Jennifer Gordon (whose back is to the camera) and some friends ran into Mayor Rob Ford coming along a street near the Esplanade on St. Patrick's Day last year. Allegations have come out about his behaviour that night.
Mayor Rob Ford snorted cocaine, swilled vodka, popped a dose of OxyContin and partied with an apparent prostitute during an all-night binge last year that raved from his office to a private room in a Toronto bar and back, according to allegations made by Ford staffers and bar employees to police investigating the mayor.
Several of Ford's top aides told detectives they were concerned about the mayor's intoxicated, addled and even violent behaviour the night of St. Patrick's Day 2012.
Before the tumultuous night was over, they told police, Ford would call a cab driver a “Paki,” deride several top aides as “Liberal bitches,” burst into tears about his deceased father and tell a female staffer that “I banged your pussy.”
Ford was “totally out of it” when staff member Isaac Ransom arrived at the mayor's office around 9 p.m. The mayor had drunk half of a 40-ounce bottle of vodka and was hanging out with a woman who “may have been an escort or prostitute,” Ransom told police.
“There have been rumours that Mayor Ford has used escorts or prostitutes. (The woman) has also been seen with Mayor Ford at a stag party,” said the police document summarizing the Ransom interview.
Ford talked of getting hammered and “going out then getting laid.”
His night was just beginning.
The insider accounts of Ford’s St. Patrick’s Day rampage were released Wednesday as part of documents for a police investigation of Ford and Sandro Lisi, Ford’s friend, occasional driver and suspected drug dealer. The allegations have not been proven in court.
In March, the Star reported on Ford’s drunken behaviour at the Bier Markt and the Garrison Ball, which he was asked to leave.
The mayor dismissed the stories as an “outright lie” and said, “It is the Toronto Star going after me, again and again and again — they're relentless.”
Though the mayor publicly scoffed at the reports, his staff would later tell police of a night even more sordid and sensational than what had been described in the initial article.
Sometime after 9 p.m. March 17, 2012, an already drunk Ford dismissed his staff's pleas to stay in his office. Ransom told police staff members had already pulled Ford away from smoking hash with two of the guests — the apparent escort and Ford's old friend Peter Kordas, who was forced out of the TTC for propositioning a young female riding his bus.
Now, the mayor was set on going to a party he'd heard about.
Upon arriving at McVeigh's Pub on Church St., Ford hurled a fistful of business cards at the driver. Staff members said Ford “started calling the taxi driver a ‘Paki' ” and “made mocking fake language sounds,” Ransom told police.
A senior aide paid the fare and calmed the situation with the cabbie. But Ford quickly grew bored by the scene at the bar. “He wanted to party,” a former Ford staffer told the Star. Around midnight, the group reached the Bier Markt pub and entered a private room.
Around 1 a.m., the mayor's group ordered poutine. Server Leonardo Navarro, who worked on George Smitherman's mayoral campaign in 2010, told police when he entered the room he saw Ford and a female turned in toward each other with their heads down and back from the table. Navarro told police he heard two “sniffs” from both of them.
Navarro placed the poutine on the table and started walking away when Ford's aide, Brooks Barnett, reached for his arm, thanked him, told the waiter that if he ever needed anything to call him, handed him a business card and said, “Don't tell anyone about what you saw here tonight.”
Navarro told police that Barnett's comments made him 80 per cent sure the mayor was using cocaine. Bartender Zach Apostoleris told police he believed the Mayor was doing “blow” in the private room. Another server, though, told police she did not think anyone was using illegal drugs.
Last year, bar manager Robert Medal told the Star “Mr. Ford was an exemplary guest enjoying a fun night out at the Bier Markt.” Another bar employee told police the mayor did not seem intoxicated, and wasn't kicked out but escorted out by a staffer for “crowd control.”
The bartender described a different end to the mayor's visit. He saw Ford make a “dash” and “charge” the dance floor. This caused a big commotion, the bartender said, because the mayor was a “sweaty fat mess.”
After the staff got Ford into a cab to return to City Hall, Ford's mood changed, Ransom told police.
The mayor seemed “tired and erratic. At one point, Mayor Ford broke down and cried about his father,” the police document said.
Several staff told police that on other occasions Ford had called them from his father's gravesite, sometimes sounding choked, as if he was crying.
Back in his office that night, the mayor turned on his staff, calling three of them “Liberal bitches,” Ransom told police.
“Ford started on a Liberal tangent and pushed (Earl) Provost into a wall,” the police document said. “The staff tried to pull the mayor off and then he charged at Barnett.”
In council Wednesday, Ford denied ever assaulting a staff member.
But according to police interviews with staffers, much of Ford's anger was directed at a female policy adviser, Olivia Gondek.
The mayor claimed to have slept with the now-former staffer and lewdly told her that night, “I'm going to eat you out” and “I banged your pussy,” Ransom told police.
Gondek said Wednesday the mayor never made those comments to her.
At one point in the night, Towhey told police, a staffer saw Ford pop what looked like an OxyContin pill. A former staffer told police Ford had once been prescribed OxyContin for an infection. It is unclear if he was still under prescription on St. Patrick's Day 2012.
Then-chief of staff Towhey also told police the mayor's staff didn't see Ford do any drugs other than OxyContin that night.
As he was walked out around 4 a.m., Ford “told a female guard at City Hall that he ‘was going to eat her box,' ” Ransom told investigators.
There is no mention of the comment in a security staff incident report that described the mayor wandering to the security desk with a half-empty brandy bottle and rambling angrily about someone stealing his car.
Provost, now Ford's chief of staff, took the “inebriated” mayor home in a taxi. During the trip, Ford told Provost to get out of the taxi so he could talk to someone to set up a meeting, Towhey told police.
When they arrived at the mayor’s home, Ford “jumped out of the taxi, jumped into his own car, reversed it very quickly almost hitting the taxi and Provost and left the area.”
It’s unclear where the mayor went, whom he met or when his St. Patrick’s Day ended.
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