Doug Ford recants surveillance theory
As questions mount over why police are investigating the city’s mayor, rob Ford’s brother on Monday said he was “mistaken” to have suggested police were conducting aerial surveillance on the family home in etobicoke.
While Mayor Ford has yet to address revelations that he and his associates are the targets of a Toronto police investigation, councillor Ford last week substantiated reports that a cessna aircraft was used to track the mayor, telling the Toronto Sun he saw the plane over his mother’s home for five straight days in August. He said he “gave them the finger” and later called police, who told him the plane was related to an airport bust, but he did not believe them. “you know when a plane is surveilling you,” councillor Ford told the Sun.
contacted by the National Post on Monday, however, the councillor backtracked from his earlier remarks.
“I was mistaken. I’m not too sure who it was [in the plane], to be frank with you,” councillor Ford said.
Asked why he was rejecting the police surveillance premise when he seemed so sure just days earlier, the councillor responded: “I’m just not sold on it. I don’t care who it was or what it was and that’s my comment. I believe it could have been the media for all I know.”
He brushed off questions on his purported conversation with police about the plane and the airport bust, instead lashing out at journalists.
“Anyone could follow me, I don’t care,” councillor Ford said. “I know for a fact that the Star and the Globe, they harass us, and so that’s my focus. … I’m not worried about the police.”
Meanwhile, the Post confirmed last week that Toronto police have a special squad of detectives investigating rob Ford and his associates. The mayor has not responded to requests for comment on the matter, and his brother said he knew nothing about the investigation.
Police chief bill blair chose his words carefully Monday. Asked, following a police services board meeting, why a squad is investigating the mayor, the chief responded: “I didn’t say we were.”
He went on to say that police were “conducting investigations into alleged criminal behaviour” that resulted in charges last week against the mayor’s friend and occasional driver, Alexander Lisi. Asked to clarify further if police are not investigating the chief magistrate, the chief said: “I’m not commenting on any investigation we may or may not be involved in.”
He also refused to discuss the reported use of the cessna. As for the significance of appointing seasoned det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux to head the probe that resulted in the drug arrest of Lisi last week, chief blair said, “Where an investigation needs to be done, I go with the best people to do it, and that’s what I did in this case.”
Lisi was arrested as part of the ongoing probe and charged with drug trafficking and related offences. Police say the investigation arose during the course of the yearlong Project Traveller gunsand-gangs sweep, which resulted in dozens of arrests in the dixon-Kipling neighbourhood. Among the suspects were two men who appeared in a photograph with Mayor Ford outside a reputed local crack house, and a third who purportedly tried to sell the Toronto Star an alleged cellphone video of the mayor smoking from a crack pipe.
A media coalition fighting to publicize search-warrant documents in the Project Traveller raids was also back in court Monday to launch an application to overrule a previous court decision barring access to much of the material.