Radio station takes Rob Ford off the air
Rough week for Toronto mayor ends as it began
TORONTO — Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s week ended much as it began, with the chief magistrate surrounded by a crowd of reporters following his every move — but the ground has shifted for the embattled mayor.
He lost a defining feature of his mayoralty on Friday, with the cancellation of the weekly radio show that has been a soapbox for his administration, and saw his big brother, city councillor Doug Ford, join the chorus calling on him to take a break.
Coun. Ford stopped short of suggesting the mayor enter rehab, an option Ford’s lawyer said he is considering.
“It’s best we hear from his lips,” Dennis Morris told The Associated Press, because “when you go left, he goes right.”
All the mayor would say as he left city hall in the afternoon was that he needed a bit of space to deal with a “very serious personal issue,” a reference to his mother going for surgery.
On Friday, Toronto also heard for the first time from the “broker” — the man who tried to arrange the sale of the alleged crack video to the Toronto Star.
Mohamed Farrah, 33, told CityNews’ Avery Haines about the “hysteria” that ensued in his community after the Toronto Star and U.S. website Gawker published stories about the video ap- parently showing the mayor smoking crack cocaine. He said he received calls from unidentified people who referred to “ex military” and “ex police” and lived in fear.
“They said we are going to make you disappear,” said Farrah.
The last eight days have been extraordinary for Mayor Ford, beginning with the release last Thursday of a stack of court documents detailing an extensive police surveillance investigation into the mayor and his friend, Alexander Lisi, who is accused of trying to extort alleged gang members who were shopping around the video.
That same day, Police Chief Bill Blair announced police had found the recording and that its contents matched media reports.
On Sunday, Ford apologized for a couple of episodes of public drunkenness.
On Tuesday, he admitted to smoking crack cocaine during one of his drunken stupors.
On Thursday he apologized again, this time for a new video that showed him in a vulgar, incoherent rant while inebriated, threatening to kill someone.
Doug Ford said he believed this new video is an “isolated incident.” What exactly the mayor is talking about is not known.
“I’ve mentioned to Rob, maybe go away for a week, a couple of weeks, get your mind together,” Coun. Ford told AM640′s John Oakley. “If Rob goes away on a little vacation, a week, two weeks, comes back, Rob loses 50-60 pounds, stays on the straight and narrow because he’s a good, good man, he’s an honest man, and he moves forward, it would be tough, John Tory, Karen Stintz, Olivia Chow, it’d be tough to beat Rob Ford.” He added: “Rob hasn’t been honest with himself and the people about his personal issues for many reasons.”
Coun. Ford also said the media “took advantage” of his mother, who gave an interview Thursday saying her son needed to “smarten up a little bit.”
Diane Ford told CP24 that the mayor’s biggest problem is his weight, that he needs to see a counsellor and install an alcohol detector in his SUV, but that he doesn’t need to go to rehab and he doesn’t need to resign.
Meanwhile, the alleged crack video was front and centre in a Superior Court of Justice courtroom Friday, when a lawyer for an alleged gang member argued that his client should be able to view the recording in order to prove that he was not involved in making, possessing or trying to sell it.
Nathan Gorham represents Mohammad Khattak, one of the men pictured with Mayor Ford in a notorious photograph outside an Etobicoke crack house.
Gorham argued that since the photo is published alongside virtually all stories about the video, it implies Khattak, who was arrested in raids targeting the Dixon City Bloods, was involved with the video.
Crown attorney Grace Hession David said Khattak is neither on the video, nor heard speaking on it. Gorham argues his client still has an interest in knowing who is on the video, and implored Justice Nordheimer to view it himself if he does not grant Khattak’s request. Stressing he has not made up his mind, the judge asked that the video be brought to Superior Court of Justice on Tuesday, when he will render a decision.
Police are still in possession of the video, and are still trying to determine when it was recorded, the court heard.
Gorham said the photo was a result of a “chance meeting” with the mayor outside a crack house on Windsor Road. It shows Ford with Khattak, and two other alleged gang members, one of whom is dead.
Justice Nordheimer is also expected to decide next week if remaining portions of a document that revealed Ford’s ties and covert meetings with an alleged drug dealer can be released.