Toronto mayor Rob Ford crack scandal, Somalis own the evidence

[Wadani]

Boom Boom;957066 wrote:

Somali men are worthless. No morals or dignity. Biggest mistake Canada made was letting these animals in this beautiful country.

 

Can Canada deport all Somali men? Can we make that happen?

Adigoo nool is aas, illeen kolayba bakhti baad tahee.

[Cambuulo iyo bun]

Boom Boom;957066 wrote:

Somali men are worthless. No morals or dignity. Biggest mistake Canada made was letting these animals in this beautiful country.

 

Can Canada deport all Somali men? Can we make that happen?

[Safferz]

Rob Ford crack video scandal: More staff quit mayor’s office

 

By: David Rider Urban Affairs Bureau Chief, Published on Thu May 30 2013

 

Chaos gripping Mayor Rob Ford’s office is continuing with the resignation of two more staffers, bringing to five the number who have quit or were fired in a week.

 

Brian Johnston, Ford’s advisor on council relations, was walked down a second-floor stairwell and out of city hall by security in the latest evidence of chaos gripping the office of the mayor of Canada’s biggest city.

 

Ford’s executive assistant, Kia Nejatian, also quit early Thursday morning.

 

That brings to five the number of staff who have walked out or been fired from Ford’s office in a week. His office now has only 12 employees; many councillors believed it was too lean even when it still had 17.

 

Councillor Frank Di Giorgio, Ford’s budget chief, urged Ford to hire “a minimum” of six more employees, “if not more”: “Hopefully not just young people, but some experienced people.” But he said he suspects the cost-conscious Ford might not do so.

 

“Knowing the mayor the way I do, I wouldn’t be surprised if, for two leaving, he brings back one. So how many have we had leaving, five? We might be lucky to get three, in total, to replace the five,” Di Giorgio said.

 

“I’m hoping that he – not necessarily abandon that, but certainly become a little more flexible. Because he does have the budgetary space; I don’t want to see costs go up, but he does have some leeway there to have some more staff, and he would be well-advised to bring in some more staff.”

 

The latest news prompted Premier Kathleen Wynne to say she’s “worried” and won’t rule out the unprecedented move of stepping in to bring stability to Canada’s biggest city.

 

“The mayor needs to deal with his personal issues,” Wynne said, adding she “will take action if and when it's appropriate . . . There are actions that we can take and actions that we cannot.”

 

At city hall, the mayor, his brother Councillor Doug Ford and security officers entered the glass-walled staff office on city hall’s second floor around 1 p.m. They stayed there for a long time, with various people entering and leaving an office, before Johnston emerged.

 

He walked out the back door alone but a security guard joined him in the hallway and walked him to the stairwell.

 

As Johnston was walking out through the underground parking lot, Johnston told reporters: “I chose to leave on my own terms . . . The timing was right for me,” and there are other things that he would like to move on to.

 

Asked if Ford can recover from the scandal, Johnston said: “He’s recovered from a lot of things already.” Asked if Ford can survive this, Johnston said: “Anything is possible.”

 

TTC Chair Karen Stintz said of Johnston: “Brian was a consummate professional, well-read and prepared. An asset to council.”

 

The parade out the mayor’s door began with Mark Towhey, Ford’s chief of staff, longtime right-hand man and policy guru, who was fired and marched out by security last Thursday.

 

Then on Monday Ford’s two spokespeople, George Christopoulos and Isaac Ransom, tendered their resignations and slipped out before they could be marched out by security.

 

Towhey tweeted Thursday afternoon: “Kia @kianejatian and Brian @BJohnston42 are both exceptional young pros with great integrity. I was privileged to work with both of them.”

 

Towhey sent similar messages of support to Christopoulos and Ransom when they followed him out the door.

 

The two latest departures come on the day that the Star reported that sources said Ford told senior aides in a meeting not to worry about a video appearing to show him smoking crack cocaine because he knew where it was.

 

Ford then blurted out the address of two 17th-floor units — 1701 and 1703 — at a Dixon Rd. apartment complex, to the shock of staffers at a city hall meeting almost two weeks ago, the sources said.

 

The mayor cited “our contacts” as the source of his information, according to insiders familiar with the unusual May 17 session in his office.

 

Staffers were alarmed by the implication of hearing so precise a location, sources said.

 

Earlier Thursday at city hall, councillors accused Ford of “waffling”, being “evasive” and even calling for him to resign as he refuses to fully discuss crack video allegations.

 

“He’s the chief magistrate — the ducking and weaving and waffling just won’t work around here,” said Councillor James Pasternak, a former Ford ally.

 

“Clearly it’s a distraction, it’s damaging, it’s knocking us off our message. We need a full-time mayor who is focused on city building and building a better community . . . and these are just allegations.

 

“They’re unproven but they have legs and that’s damaging . . . The longer it lasts the more destructive it becomes and it’s not healthy for the city.”

 

Centrist Councillor Josh Matlow tweeted: “Toronto needs a new mayor.”

 

Councillor John Parker, a conservative voice of calm on council, accused Ford of being “evasive” and grew emotional talking about how Toronto needs leadership. Parker praised heartfelt words he had heard from hockey hero Paul Henderson at a morning prayer service.

 

Ford’s current staff has little expertise in policy. The 12 employees include three recent hires: JC Hasko, a 21-year-old Don Bosco Eagles assistant football coach and a personal trainer; Brendan Croskerry, a 27-year-old singer-songwriter with marketing experience; and Ford friend and former businessman David Price.

 

Special assistant Tom Beyer has been the mayor’s receptionist and the manager of his Twitter account. Amin Massoudi, a communications assistant appointed Monday, is a young Queen’s University graduate who had been Councillor Doug Ford’s executive assistant. Chris Fickel, another young aide and now acting executive assistant to the chief of staff, has done constituency work and helped the mayor run his football teams. Carley McNeil is an event coordinator. Michael Prempeh, a special assistant, is also a recent university graduate.

 

Earl Provost, a veteran, is acting chief of staff. Ford also has a senior policy advisor, Sheila Paxton, who had worked for Councillor Mark Grimes; a policy advisor and council relations official, Brooks Barnett; and an acting press secretary, Sunny Petrujkic, who has been his chief liaison to council.

 

With files from Daniel Dale

[uchi]

Wow what a story. I wonder how it will end. I hope the mayor doesn't take his own life.

[Safferz]

Mayor Rob Ford suffers a sixth resignation from his staff

 

Ford says three new hires have been made, including one he showed around the office Friday.

 

By: David Rider Urban Affairs Bureau Chief, Published on Fri May 31 2013

 

Mayor Rob Ford suffered a sixth staff resignation in eight days, albeit one apparently in the works before the crack video scandal unleashed a high-profile firing and a wave of resignations in his office.

 

Michael Prempeh, one of the two young “special assistants” who came to Ford’s office via the University of Toronto’s football program, resigned on Friday, a city spokeswoman confirmed.

 

Sources say he told Ford and his colleagues weeks ago that he planned to leave to focus on marketing and promotions duties at CAVE magazine.

 

Ford moved swiftly to counter talk that his office is in chaos by announcing Friday that he has hired three “movers and shakers” and expects to announce another three or four hires early next week.

 

One of the new staffers is special assistant Katrina Xavier-Ponniah. The junior position pays in the $40,000 range.

 

Xavier-Ponniah’s Linkedin profile says she studied at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. Work experience includes summer stints of administrative work for a lawyer and data entry for the university.

 

The exodus from Ford’s office started with Mark Towhey, Ford’s chief of staff, right-hand man and tireless defender who was fired and marched out of city hall by security.

 

Sources say Towhey had urged the mayor to take steps to get healthy.

 

Then on Monday both of Ford’s spokespeople, George Christopolous and Isaac Ransom, abruptly resigned.

 

They were followed on Thursday by Brian Johnston, a policy adviser and council relations official, and Kia Nejatian, Ford’s executive assistant.

 

Ford, who has said things are going “great” and it is business as usual for his office, told reporters Friday that he had just hired two new staff.

 

“Yeah, good people,” he said, before giving two young women separate tours of the mayor’s administrative office, nicknamed “the fishbowl” for its glass walls, which has been the site of staff departure dramas.

 

A relaxed-looking Ford paused to show one of the women a fish tank in the corner.

 

Publicly, Ford has called reports that he appears on a video smoking crack cocaine as “ridiculous” and said “there’s no video.”

 

However, Ford has refused to discuss the reports in detail, fuelling concerns from councillors that the scandal and sordid headlines are damaging the city and prompting two of them to say he should step aside temporarily.

[Safferz]

Sigh. Gawker just posted an update, Toronto Star f*cked everything up:

 

The Rob Ford Crack Video Might Be "Gone"

 

JOHN COOK

36 minutes ago

 

Before the Rob Ford Crackstarter—our crowdfunding effort to purchase and publish a video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine—reached its $200,000 goal last month, we let everyone know that we had lost contact with the people who have custody of the video. At the end of last week, after a long silence, the video's owner reached out to the intermediary we have been dealing with. He told him the video is "gone."

 

What does that mean? We don't really know. A few days after we posted our story about having viewed the video in a car in a parking lot in Toronto, the owner went silent. Two Toronto Star reporters had quickly followed our report, claiming to have seen the same video. Both Gawker and the Star reporters were introduced to the owner of the video by the same intermediary.

 

The attention surrounding the breaking of the story had two important consequences: First, the owner of the video became angry at us, and at the intermediary. The owner was trying to sell the video, but he apparently didn't want or anticipate the media circus that erupted after the story broke. We decided to break it, with the consent of the intermediary, after a CNN reporter called one of Ford's ex-staffers about the video and word started to get out. The CNN reporter had learned about the video after we confidentially reached out to the network in an effort to partner in purchasing it.

 

Our decision to publish was informed by 1) a desire to get ahead of any rival stories that the gossip mill might generate and 2) a fear that, once Ford was privately alerted to the existence of the video, he would start trying to track it down. That decision lit a match on this story that made it much more difficult—and maybe impossible—to get a deal done and bring the video to the light of day.

 

Complicating matters was the fact that the Star's coverage contained several details—including the rough location where its reporters viewed the video, the rough location where it was purportedly recorded, a description of the intermediary's line of work, the ethnicity of the intermediary and the owner, and physical details about the video owner's appearance—that may have been helpful in identifying and locating the owner. Indeed, according to the Star and other outlets, Ford himself told his staff that the video could be found at a Toronto address—320 Dixon Rd.—near the location where the Star reporters wrote that they viewed it. (Whether he deduced that location—which may or may not be where the video was actually stored—from the Star's coverage or would have known anyway, we can't say.)

 

The second consequence was that Toronto's tight-knit Somali ethnic community became angry. The Canadian media seized on the Star's repeated description of the owners as "Somali men involved in the drug trade." The story quickly became about Rob Ford and his "Somali crack dealers," and the Star's public editor subsequently criticized the paper for "going overboard" on the references to the Somali community. We don't know for certain the citizenship or immigration status of the video's owner, but shortly after the story broke, the intermediary told me: "We're all Canadians."

 

According to the intermediary, these two factors—a fear of being identified, and a strong desire from the Somali community to make the whole thing go away—led the owner of the video to go to ground and soured the owner's relationship with the intermediary. I frankly find it difficult to believe that a crack dealer would be more responsive to the desires of his ethnic community than to a $200,000 bounty. But I have heard independently from others familiar with the goings-on in Toronto that leaders in its Somali community have determined who the owner is and brought intense pressure to bear on him and his family. Toronto's "Little Mogadishu" neighborhood is located in the ward Rob Ford represented when he was a city councillor; though he is a conservative and a racist buffoon, I am told he has long-standing connections to Somali power brokers there.

 

Which brings us to this past Friday, when the intermediary called to tell me that he had finally heard from the owner. And his message was: "It's gone. Leave me alone." It was, the intermediary told me, a short conversation.

 

"It's gone" could mean many things. It might mean that the video has been destroyed. It might mean that it has been handed over to Ford or his allies. It might mean that he intends to sell or give it to a Canadian media outlet. It might mean that the Toronto Police Department has seized it and plans to use it as evidence in a criminal investigation. It might mean that it has been transferred to the custody of Somali community leaders for safekeeping. It might be a lie. The intermediary doesn't know. Neither do I.

 

I do know that Gawker is currently sitting on $184,689.81 collected via our Rob Ford Crackstarter. (That's $201,254 raised in total, less $8,365.23 in fees extracted by PayPal, $8,043.96 taken by Indiegogo, and $155 in contributions raised that we have yet to receive.) It is obviously our hope that someone steps up to claim this money and provides us the video.

 

The intermediary has claimed that a copy of the video was made and taken outside Toronto for safekeeping. We don't know if that's true, or if it is, whether that copy is also "gone." We can still imagine any number of scenarios in which this video comes to light. If you are reading this, and you have access to the video, and you like money, please email me at john@gawker.com.

 

If this doesn't happen soon, we will—as we initially promised when we launched the campaign—select a Canadian nonprofit that addresses substance abuse issues to receive the money.

 

Don't do crack.

[GaraadMon]

Scapegoating the Somali community for their incompetence. Stay classy Gawker.

[Safferz]

Blackflash;959081 wrote:

Scapegoating the Somali community for their incompetence. Stay classy Gawker.

I'm not sure how you interpreted that from the update because that's not what I read at all.

[GaraadMon]

But I have heard independently from others familiar with the goings-on in Toronto that leaders in its Somali community have determined who the owner is and brought intense pressure to bear on him and his family. Toronto's "Little Mogadishu" neighborhood is located in the ward Rob Ford represented when he was a city councillor; though he is a conservative and a racist buffoon, I am told he has long-standing connections to Somali power brokers there.

With mentions of Little Mogadishu, Somali power brokers, and leaders in the community essentially making his family an offer they can't refuse. You'd think you were reading the synopsis of a Somali mob novel.

[Yunis]

Don't do crack..

Gawker editor signs off with that, I think this whole episode was farce. TorontoStar took the bait and showed its true colors. Star’s credibility was long lost, attacks on Somali community has always been their niche, but this time it backfired on them. Let them drag themselves through the mud.

[underdog]

Safferz;959077 wrote:

I do know that Gawker is currently sitting on $184,689.81 collected via our Rob Ford Crackstarter. (That's $201,254 raised in total, less $8,365.23 in fees extracted by PayPal, $8,043.96 taken by Indiegogo, and $155 in contributions raised that we have yet to receive.) It is obviously our hope that someone steps up to claim this money and provides us the video.

 

Don't do crack.

LOL, Like I said, THERE IS NO VIDEO!

 

PayPal and Indiegogo made out like bandits. Gawker says it will "donate" the funds to a "substance abuse" charity?!? gimme a break!

 

Safferz, can you think back to the exact moment that you decided it was a good idea to financially contribute towards rewarding a drug dealer/possible murderer/ snitch in order to publicly humiliate a politician who is no better and no worse than any other mayor?

 

Congrats, you are part of the circus that will make Rob Ford the most memorable mayor since Mel called in the military for a snow storm.

[Safferz]

If there is no video, why did Rob Ford tell his aides the address where it could be found, leading his chief of staff to go to police? On what planet is Rob Ford "no better or no worse" than any other mayor? You are delusional.

[Safferz]

Truth is stranger than fiction...

A Pipe-Wielding Thug Stormed the Rob Ford Crackhouse, Seeking Video

 

JOHN COOK

Today 1:36pm

 

Last night, Gawker identified the house in Toronto's Etobicoke neighborhood that was the backdrop for a photo of mayor Rob Ford standing with two men who were later gunned down in a gangland-style shooting. Days after we published that photo—along with an account of having watched a video of Ford smoking crack cocaine—a resident of that home and his girlfriend were attacked by a man wielding a metal pipe, who had come looking for the video, Gawker has learned.

 

We have also learned that the video of Ford smoking crack cocaine was recorded inside that home on the same day the photo was taken.

 

The home, at 15 Windsor Rd., was identified last night in separate reports by Gawker, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail. According to the Star, it is owned by an elderly retiree named Lina Basso and occupied by her children Mario Basso, 40; Fabio Basso, 45; and Elena Basso, 51. Citing residents familiar with the home, the Star reported that Fabio Basso and Ford "knew each other from high school."

 

The Star and Globe and Mail both reported that, according to neighbors, the Basso home has been a frequent site of suspected drug activity for years—a crackhouse, essentially. "Four neighbours from different houses," the Star wrote, "told the Star that they have for years had concerns of drug activity at number 15. They say the house seems to be the centre for drug activity spilling over from the nearby apartments and that young men have been seen coming and going from the house."

 

A source who knows both Basso and Ford tells Gawker that the men are longtime friends, and that Ford has been a frequent visitor to 15 Windsor over the years. According to this source, the video of Ford smoking crack was recorded there at some point six to eight months ago during one of Ford's "binges." "He's been doing it for years," the source said of Ford's trip to the house. "They go down in the basement and party." The source said he would frequently hear Fabio complain, after Ford's visits, "Rob and my sister kept me up all night."

 

On the day the video was recorded, the source said, Basso's mother was out of town. Ford came over, and "some kids from the neighborhood"—by which the source meant the nearby housing complex at 320 Dixon Rd. where Ford would later tell his staff he believed the video was being stored—were called over to supply the group with crack. At one point, the group—which included Anthony Smith and Muhammad Khattak, who were later shot in March outside a Toronto nightclub—asked Ford for a picture. (I should note here that one of our sources on this story has repeatedly insisted that Smith was not personally involved in the drug trade.)

 

When Fabio objected to a photograph being taken inside his home, someone suggested they go outside. "Ford ran outside like a schoolgirl to have that picture taken," the source, who was not present but heard about the evening's events later, told Gawker.

 

Flash forward to last month, after Gawker broke the story of the video and published the photo. On or about Friday, May 17, the source said—the day after we published the story—two large men knocked on Fabio's door. "They told him that he needed to get the kid who sold them the crack that night to come back to the house," the source said. "That he needed to induce him to come over." Fabio reached the dealer, who told him that he was out of town, in Windsor, Ontario, and would not be coming over. (Gawker was aware that the owner of the videotape had indeed left Toronto in the immediate aftermath of the story; this detail had not to our knowledge been previously made public.)

 

The men returned to 15 Windsor on several occasions over the next few days, the source said, trying to get Fabio to lure the dealer back to his house. After attempting to cooperate without success, the source said, Fabio told the men to stop dropping by. "He told them, 'Look, leave me alone,'" the source said. "'This is my mother's house. Rob got himself into this situation. It's his problem, not mine.'"

 

 

Several days later, the source said, one of the men returned to Fabio's house, forced his way through the door, and beat Fabio and Fabio's girlfriend with a steel pipe. "He spent the night at [nearby Etobicoke General Hospital]," the source said. A photograph of Fabio (at left) published this morning by the Star doesn't show any visible injuries.

 

Last night, both the Star and the Globe and Mail reported that police cars were spotted at 15 Windsor Rd. on the evening of Tuesday, May 21—five days after the crack video story broke—in response to an "armed home invasion." This morning, Toronto Police Department spokesperson Mark Pugash confirmed to Gawker that on that evening, at approximately 11 p.m., officers responded to an "assault in progress" at 15 Windsor Rd. "A male forced his way into the house and assaulted two people with a weapon," Pugash said. "The suspect fled on foot, and two victims were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. No arrests have been made, and the investigation continues." Asked if the department believed the assault to be connected to Mayor Rob Ford, Pugash replied: "We don't speculate." He also declined to identify the victims.

 

A spokesman for Ford did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and nobody answered the phone at a number associated with the Basso residence. At the time our source relayed the story above to us yesterday, none of the details that were subsequently corroborated—the location of the house, the name and relationships of the owners and residents of the house, the fact and details of the May 21 assault, and the fact that the owner of the video had fled Toronto immediately after the story broke—had been made public.

 

Another detail, gleaned from comments on a Toronto web site that pre-date the breaking of the crack story, also tends to corroborate the source's story. On March 26, Toronto blogger Toronto Mike linked to a podcast with Star reporter Kevin Donavan discussing a recent Star report about Ford's public drunkenness at an event. A commenter going by the name "Rinse" responded to the post with the following:

 

Here's the thing: Rob Ford DOES use crack cocaine. A friend of mine, her mother is a serious drug addict. Rob Ford regularly goes over to her house to smoke crack.

 

The problem is this: The daughter wants to expose Rob Ford's drug abuse, but her oldschool Italian grandmother won't allow her to "bring shame" upon the family, long story short. So basically the daughter has become complicit with the entire thing instead of doing the right thing. Shame on you Jasmin.

As commenters on Reddit pointed out last night, an Elio Basso passed away in 2009. His obituary described him as "Beloved husband of Lina. Loving father of Enzo, Elena, Fabio and Mario. Cherished Nonno of Jasmine and Lisa."

 

Update: The CBC reports that the victims in the attack were "a 31-year-old female and a 44-year-old male" and that they "suffered minor injuries, including a cut on the left cheek and a blow to the head." (The Star has Fabio's age as 45.)

 

Second Update: This post originally referred at two points to the "night the video was taken." That was written in haste; the video I saw actually appears to have been shot during daylight.

 

Contact the author of this post at john@gawker.com.

[Safferz]

Apophis;959678 wrote:

What self respecting human takes Gawker seriously anyway.This whole thing goes to show id!ots will pay good money if their emotions are stirred.

Gawker's coverage has been much better and more responsible than the Toronto Star's, but both could have been more sensitive in their disclosure of identifying information, knowing people have been and will be hurt over this video.

[Jacpher]

Tabloid journalism is what this was. Lots of $$ to be made in this business.