‘I knew I did nothing wrong,’ says Ford
Detective insists investigation ongoing
As they like to say south of the border, keep Toronto in your prayers.
Here in Canada’s largest city, it is not enough that we have a cracksmoking, prone-to-drunken-stupors mayor who appears to actually believe that because he isn’t facing criminal charges he has been “cleared” by the lengthy Toronto police probe that showed him, among other things, consorting with drug thugs, posing for pictures at a known crack house, appearing for all the world to be engaged in curious drug-transaction-like hand-tohand transfers, oh yes, and urinating in public.
(This is akin to being caught having a knee-trembler with the nextdoor neighbour and pronouncing yourself vindicated, your reputation salvaged, because you weren’t caught stark naked, in full flagrante delicto, in her bed.) But wait, there’s more. Because of the paranoid fantasies of Ford and his lumpen brother Doug — they saw a conspiracy against them in the fact that Toronto police Chief Bill Blair expressed disappointment when a recovered video showed the mayor smoking crack — about a month ago, Blair asked the Ontario Provincial Police to assume oversight of the investigation, which is called Brazen 2.
Frankly, it was a way to put a little distance between the chief and the target of the probe, that is, the mayor.
That’s all it was — window-dressing, plain and simple.
The project has always been a Toronto one; it has always been headed by senior Toronto officers; it is always going to be run by Toronto. The OPP was never meant to reinvestigate or anything like it.
But wait, there’s more: Media reports Thursday suggested that now, the two forces are embroiled in a cat fight.
Insp. Chris Nicholas, the senior OPP officer, and Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux, the Toronto homicide officer who has led Brazen 2 from the get-go, are said to see the case differently.
Nicholas, said one report, sees the mayor as the victim of an extortion effort by the drug dealer who filmed the crack video; Toronto officers are said to see the video-maker and his pals as the victims of an extortion attempt by the mayor’s friend, Sandro Lisi (who is actually charged with extortion in connection with the very video).
Somehow, this story was conflated with a different one, which reported that the OPP had withdrawn from the investigation because there’s not enough evidence to charge anyone, including the mayor, and quoting multiple but anonymous sources saying that Crown prosecutors have given advice to that effect, or flashed the red light.
Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash immediately denied all that — if the OPP have withdrawn from the case, he said, they forgot to tell Toronto, and he snickered at the notion that Crowns from the notoriously secretive attorney-general’s office are now blabbing gaily away on the sly to the press.
Brendan Crawley, the spokesman for that opaque ministry, issued a formal no-comment late Thursday that was a masterpiece of saying nothing while saying nothing, as is his wont.
The fact is, however, that the Toronto police have been getting advice from the Crowns all the way along on this case, and it would be stunning if they gave their final conclusions first and only to the OPP.
And Giroux himself told the National Post flatly that “My investigation is still going.”
So there you have it: The probe is either over or it isn’t; the mayor is not going to be charged or that hasn’t been decided yet; the Crowns have either concluded it’s all over, or they haven’t.
From all this, the big pink lug, bless his heart, has somehow concluded that he can now rest easy.
“I knew I did nothing wrong,” the mayor said, as reports of the police cat fight emerged.
“I knew the day was going to come that I’d be cleared and I guess today’s the day.”
He did nothing wrong? He may have done nothing criminal, but that’s hardly the same thing. He’s like the guy having the knee-trembler with the neighbour who then tries to convince the angry spouse that it’s all OK because hey, they weren’t lying down.
How much simpler all this might have been if, when the cops had Ford and Lisi under surveillance, and watched as they engaged in those activities which appeared in police lingo to be indicative of drug-dealing, they had busted them — right there and then.
Drug cops do this sort of thing all the time. Indeed, it’s what they do. But Messrs. Ford and Lisi were no ordinary targets, and, it appears, the whole thing may have been over-thought.
This, at long last, is one accusation that cannot be levelled at the mayor.