Ford leaves his office to address on a video released of him by local media at City Hall in Toronto. Ford has admitted that he has smoked crack cocaine, probably ‘in one of my drunken stupors’, but insisted that he is not an addict and said he would stay in office and run for re-election next year.


Reuters/Toronto

Days after Toronto Mayor Rob Ford apologised for smoking crack cocaine, he admitted yesterday he was “extremely, extremely inebriated” in a short expletive-laden video posted online.
The blurry, 80-second video, posted on the Toronto Star’s website and shown on Canadian television, shows a clearly agitated Ford ranting and pounding his hands together, while at least one other person seems to goad him on.
The Toronto Star said it had paid for the video, and said the context of the clip was not clear.
“He dies or I die,” Ford says in the clip, which also refers to something happening “in that ring”. He adds: “I need f@#$%^g 10 minutes to make sure he’s dead. It’ll be over in 5 minutes.”
Minutes after the video was posted, Ford emerged from his City Hall office to apologise.
“All I can say is – again – I’ve made mistakes. All I can do is reassure the people that ... I don’t know what to say, I just wanted to come out,” he said.
Ford added: “Obviously, I was extremely, extremely inebriated.”
The mayor did not say who he was talking about in the video.
On Tuesday Ford made international headlines when he admitted he had smoked crack cocaine, “probably in one of my drunken stupors”.
He apologised and promised it would never happen again.
At one point during the video posted yesterday, an unknown voice says “Mike Tyson”, presumably referring to the boxer.
Earlier this year Ford arm-wrestled Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler, at a media event.
The Toronto Sun, which posted a few seconds from the video, said a source close to the mayor had confirmed it showed Ford, but said it “looks a lot worse than it really is” because the mayor “sometimes goes off on tangents”.
Meanwhile, protesters left colourful chalk messages on walls and pavement outside Toronto City Hall urging Ford to quit.
“I’m a taxpayer, and I would like you to resign – now,” read one message targeted at the right-leaning mayor, who speaks often about saving taxpayers’ money.
Another said: “This wall would be a better mayor.”
But Ford’s chalk-wielding opponents may have a long wait. The mayor has said he will not resign and plans to run again in next October’s mayoral election.
“Rob Ford is a liar,” is how the Globe and Mail, Canada’s staid national paper, opened its editorial on Wednesday. And later: “A more honourable man would do the right thing. He’d resign. Rob Ford has shown time and again that he’s not that guy.”
A bloc of angry city councillors is now set to try to pass motions to curb Ford’s already limited powers as a Toronto mayor, but it is very difficult to remove a sitting mayor.
One of Ford’s policy aides quit on Tuesday and Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly said he has suggested that Ford step down temporarily.
But Ford insists he has nothing left to hide, and over his years as a bombastic city councillor and now as a polarising mayor, he has proven resistant to both public criticism and private advice.
The story of the crack video, the existence of which was first reported in May by media blog Gawker and then by the Toronto Star newspaper, has never been exclusively about whether Ford has used illegal drugs.
It has also raised questions about Ford’s ties to alleged drug traffickers, and pitted him and his brother, also a member of Toronto city council, against the city’s chief of police, who said last week the force had obtained a video “consistent” with the Gawker and Star accounts.
Ford’s personal life started making headlines before he was elected mayor in 2010. But the Gawker and Star reports in May that they had seen a video that appeared to show Ford smoking crack transfixed Canada’s largest city.
The simmering crisis hit full boil after Police Bill Blair confirmed the video’s existence last Thursday.
Toronto police said on Tuesday that the mayor’s comments admitting that he had smoked crack had been forwarded to investigators.
The case has brought back memories of Washington DC mayor Marion Barry, who was caught on camera smoking crack, jailed, and then released, after which he was re-elected.
Police documents released last week showed that Ford had been under surveillance for months as part of an investigation into the reports about the video and other matters.
More documents are expected soon, thanks to a series of court challenges by local media outlets.
The papers show Ford met repeatedly with a friend and occasional driver, Sandro Lisi, who was arrested recently and charged with drug trafficking.
On October 31, Lisi was arrested again and charged with extortion, for actions police allege he took while trying to “retrieve a recording”.
Then there is the photo of Ford published with Gawker’s original post, which showed him with three young men.
One of the men was shot and killed on March 28, and a second was injured in the same incident. Their attacker pleaded guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault in June.
The injured man was later arrested as part of a gang crackdown called Project Traveler, according to police documents. He was charged with trafficking cocaine and marijuana. The case has not yet been heard in court.
Toronto police have said Project Traveler uncovered criminal activity that fell outside that investigation’s mandate, so the force launched a separate investigation, Project Brazen Two, led by a top city detective.
That initiative led to the extortion charge against Lisi.