Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Defiant Against Crack Allegations
Ford calls on cops to release video purporting to show him smoking a crack pipe.
Nov. 4, 2013— -- Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is doubling down against calls for his resignation amid reports that police have a video showing him smoking crack.
In a whirlwind radio show on Sunday, the embattled mayor apologized for getting drunk in public and said he would try and make sure it didn't happen again.
"I shouldn't have got hammered down at the Danforth [festival]," Ford said on his weekly radio show Sunday, according to Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper. "If you are going to have a couple drinks, you stay at home. You don't make a public spectacle of yourself."
But Ford did not address the more serious allegation against him, stemming from reports that a video recently procured by police shows him inhaling from a crack pipe. Ford said he could not comment on a video he hadn't seen and called on the police to release the video to the public.
He also said he would not step down from office. Ford was elected in 2010 and said he will serve out his four-year term. "I'll be running the ship even if it's by myself," Ford said on the radio today, according to the Globe and Mail.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said at a news conference last week that police had recovered a deleted video file that matched up with reports that Ford had been recorded inhaling from a pipe.
"That file contains video images which appear to be those images which were previously reported in the press with respect to events that took place," Blair said, according to the CBC.
The video was recovered after police arrested Ford's friend, Alexander Lisi, for drug trafficking. Police then charged Lisi with using extortion to obtain the video.
Existence of the video was first reported in May, when reporters from the website Gawker and the Toronto Star newspaper said they had seen a clip of the video and seen Ford smoking from the pipe. Gawker tried to buy the video at the time but was unsuccessful.
The mayor has called on Toronto police to release the video to the public, but Toronto Police spokesman Mark Bugash said today that police did not have the authority to release evidence. Bugash suggested Ford could apply through the court system for the evidence to be made public.
