Earlier there were eight cruisers and an ambulance. No news trucks. I guess it’s become so common that it’s not worth reporting on. Always something going down in this neighbourhood.
Morning coffee, check. Toast, check. Weather report, on. News chopper, hovering. Sirens, blaring.
Another Thursday morning in the city.
A Durham police officer for six months co-owned a medical marijuana company that is not licensed and offers consumers pot brownies and other products the government says are illegal to sell.
And veteran Const. Phil Edgar, who once received a commendation for numerous marijuana busts, did it with the blessing of his police force.
…
Durham Regional Police Service refused to answer questions about whether it was appropriate for an active police officer to be involved in this kind of business, and why it approved Edgar’s request to co-own the medical marijuana company.
Meanwhile…
Police first began cracking down on marijuana dispensaries in May after Mayor John Tory told reporters that the proliferation of the stores was turning into a crisis.
Then on May 26 police raided 43 dispensaries, arresting 90 people and charging them with a combined 186 charges under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act as well as 71 criminal charges.
…“It is illegal to sell marijuana unless you have a license given to you by Health Canada. I have never minced my words on this. I said the investigation would continue and this is the result of what I said,” [Toronto Police Chief Mark] Saunders said when asked about the raids at an unrelated news conference on Thursday.
The message is clear: if you’re a government agency you can flagrantly violate the law with absolute impunity. Thank goodness government and friends are there to “keep us safe”!
Maybe if we just vote a little harder this system of corruption and hopcrisy will change. LOL
Now, I have to stress, this is totally just a theory. I have no evidence of any of this — it is a pure flight of fancy.
But let’s consider this: how come Rob Ford is still roaming the halls of City Hall, locking reporters out, and basically being good old RoFo again? And anyone have a pool going on when he officially (documented) hits the pipe again? How far off can it be?
But he does look slimmer, I’ll give him that. His stay in unbelievably picturesque Bracebridge must’ve been good. And not too cheap neither. Bracebridge is one of the jewels in what is basically the Canadian Hamptons.
In any event, and for whatever reason, the Fords are either intimidating to Chief Blair and many others, or they’re (Fords + Blair + others) working together. Whatever the case, the top cop refuses to touch Ford with so much as a fifty-foot pole wielded by a lackey who is on concurrent traffic duty. I’ve already established this point a couple of times.
So instead, Blair decides to shuffle the investigation over to various parties, thereby washing his hands of the situation. Enforcement won’t be involved.
The courts decide that, for perhaps the same whatever reason, they don’t want to deal with this either, so they hang it out to dry like the crusty laundry it is.
The complicit media behemoths provide watered-down analysis to ensure the public that everything and anything in God’s creation that could have been done was done. We’ll simply have to accept that our Mayor is a hard-drug-smoking, prostitute-cavorting, extortion-associating, gun-and-drug-running-related, murder-linked guy; he’s just a regular multi-millionaire like the rest of us except that he’s got a disease! So obviously it would be discriminatory to even suggest that he leave City Hall at this point.
And, of course, it’s completely coincidental that the Ontario Human Rights Commission declared that addiction is a disease just before RoFo made his ignominious return. Right?
Not to put too fine a point on it, imagine going to your office after hours wasted (on multiple occasions), harassing the security, and inviting “unknown persons” in for late night parties. Not only does this not get you fired, but you threaten to sue your boss for discriminating against you because of your “disease” – the criminal excuse du jour that ends up making legitimate addicts (who purposefully hurt no one but themselves), seem like degenerates. Rob Ford is using a real medical condition to legitimize his open criminality, lies, and ongoing scumbaggery. Pretty slimy thing to do, huh? Well, that’s Rob Ford for you!
The cops might be chicken shit for whatever reason, or they may be deferential for whatever reason. The courts may have equal whatever reasons. The end result in either case is that the law was not applied equally and neither was the investigation.
So could they be working together?
Wait, no, that’s no possible. Remember when Rob and Doug chewed the chief out?
Let me offer another theory.
What if there were some secret meetings that took place in which exactly this scenario would be hatched? Rob and Doug would publicly vilify the chief (easy) who would put on a stoic face (easy) and hand the matter off to a less improprietous body, which itself would turn around and just make the whole thing public (easy). Rob and Doug gain fans because they’re under such furious attack, Bill looks like the proper police chief, and the wise court gives the people what they really want — titillating, salacious details.
The whole matter: under the rug, RoFo & Co. are pleased (as are their masters), and everyone looks like they’re just doing they’re job. Except they’re really not.
Both Rob and Doug have been going all out in putting the blame primarily on the media for all of their current woes. While the stories become more and more outrageous, it would certainly seem that they’re being exaggerated were it not for the piles of corroborating evidence and the personal testimony of the mayor’s former staff.
True, I wasn’t there and I don’t know any of the people mentioned in the police reports. My closest personal interaction with off-the-cuff statements and public officials involved newly-appointed mayor Norm Kelly in a brief conversation he had with Sarah and me at a doctor’s office about six months ago — his wife was there to treat a recurring medical condition. It seemed like an odd thing to blurt out to what to Norm must have been just two random strangers; but not exactly scandal material.
For the most part, I can only depend on inference and corroborating documents in reaching my conclusions. But increasingly, and perhaps as a result of ramped-up public pressure, one or the other of the Ford brothers makes a public statement that makes inference entirely unnecessary.
The latest such statement came courtesy of Rob himself, the “I wanted to eat her pussy” admonition — the “her” being former Ford staffer Olivia Gondek to whom, it is claimed, Rob made the proclamation during one of his infamous drunken stupors. Despite mentioning this in a closing aside during a press conference (“oh, and one more thing”), this will probably be traced by future historians as the statement that pushed Rob Ford over the edge.
Problem is, no one actually said this. The real alleged statements included:
“I’m going to eat you out”
“I banged your pussy”
“I’m going to eat your box”
Apparently Ford said this to not only Gondek but also a female security guard (the final quote), and if the reports are to be believed, this isn’t completely out of character:
xxx) Mayor FORD tried to hit-on a woman that was at the [subway] station which was unusual behaviour for him. He asked her out to dinner.
…
eeee) Mayor FORD wanted to go to the Esplanade that night.
ffff) RANSOM described Alana as:
i)a female
ii) white,
iii) blonde hair,
iv) younger than RANSOM,
v) blue eyes,
vi) thin,
vii) petite and
viii) attractive.gggg) RANSOM has a photo at home that he can provide to the police.
hhhh) Alana may have been an escort or prostitute. There have been rumors that Mayor FORD has used escorts or prostitutes. Alana has also been seen with Mayor FORD at a stag party. Alana approached PROVOST that night. This upset Mayor FORD because Alana recognized PROVOST. RANSOM thinks that Mayor FORD was upset because PROVOST was not being discreet about Alana. Alana didn’t seem intoxicated that night.
…
hhhh) Alana may have been an escort or prostitute. There have been rumors that Mayor FORD has used escorts or prostitutes. Alana has also been seen with Mayor FORD at a stag party. Alana approached PROVOST that night. This upset Mayor FORD because Alana recognized PROVOST. RANSOM thinks that Mayor FORD was upset because PROVOST was not being discreet about Alana. Alana didn’t seem intoxicated that night.
…
nn) CHRISTOPOULOS had enough of dealing with the personal life of the Mayor. That was not his job.
oo) In the past women have come to the office and told staffers that they have smoked a joint with the Mayor on the street outside of the bar. These women were told by the Mayor that they could have a job. CHRISTOPOULOS would have to interview these women and try and talk them out of a job. These women would state that the Mayor provided the marihuana. One women’s names was “Blair”. They would be contacted by email. Apparently this woman had put a picture of her and the Mayor on Twitter and she was contacted by the Toronto Star asking questions. That is when she contacted the office of the Mayor. The emails may have come into the Mayor’s account in June to August of 2012.
What’s genuinely interesting to me is how Rob managed to conflate certain statements made to the police (while ignoring other and, to me, considerably more serious allegations), to create something that was ultimately much worse.
Had he used an actual quote, his on-camera statement probably wouldn’t have been as bad. Yeah, making public statements about eating out boxes (first thing on a Monday morning to boot), probably also would’ve gotten some cockeyed looks, but I think we all agree that the way that Rob Ford decided to phrase it was probably the worst possible way.
The fact that these allegations were made is secondary to Rob’s almost mythical ability to take bad situations and make them just that much worse. To date, neither Rob, his brother, or anyone else has thought to correct this error, but regardless of whether there was a “pussy” or a “box”, or some sort of combination of the two, this latest incident just further proves what Ford critics have been saying all along: the man doesn’t have the judgement to correctly string together a sentence let alone run a city.
In my mind, that alone is an excellent reason for cutting Ford off at the knees. Sound judgement is probably the top attribute required of Toronto’s mayor, and neither Rob nor Doug have shown that they have any.
It’s still pretty heavily redacted, but the Project Brazen document detailing the surveillance of Rob Ford and the parade of shady characters he cavorts with, originally released on October 31st, has been cleared for public release.
I’ve just started skimming it so I have no comments just yet, but I recommend you grab yourself a copy and peruse at your leisure: http://www.torontocitylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ford_Court_Documents_Nov13_2013.pdf
I was planning on going down to Caribana today but the heat and humidity were so oppressive, I thought better of it early on.
And that wasn’t the only thing that was oppressive:
Police, volunteers and private security guarded entrances to the Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival, patting people down and searching bags before they entered.
A network of barricades and fences kept the public back from the dancers with glitter-dusted skin and colourful headdresses as they made their way down Toronto’s Lakeshore Blvd.
“There’s so much fences that I can’t hardly see anything,” said Ann James, a nurse from Bloomfield, CT., who was trying to find her way to the end of the parade route.
Pat downs? I thought there weren’t going to be any pat downs! And I thought they were supposed to be reserved only for the saps in the bleachers … you know, all the lowlife criminal scrum like families and the elderly that attend the parade.
And now that I think about it, I’m certain that I mentioned that this was going to turn out to basically be security theatre intended to intimidate the general public.
And now, having mentioning these things (and incidents involving police acting as simply armed thugs, not enforcers of the law), I’m sad to report that they happened last night and today exactly as I predicted.
In fact, Sarah and I decided to go out for some chicken wings in the evening and I don’t remember seeing such a ridiculous number of cops on the streets since the G20. There were cops from all over; Peel Region, Waterloo, Halton. And they were parading around in gaggles of anywhere from four to ten at intervals of — and I’m not exaggerating in any way — every single block around the city core. At times there were more cops than pedestrians.
And I can’t tell you the number of parking enforcement cops that simply strolled by cars parked in front of fire hydrants and blocking intersections, right in front of our wing place, no more than a meter away from us and clearly visible through a huge glass pane window. To put it another way, the police weren’t enforcing the law, they were out to make sure we all saw their presence.
You may, at this point, be wondering if the word “despotism” was accurate in the title of this post. After all, it’s a pretty weighty word with lots of nasty connotations. Well, how about we let Encyclopedia Britannica explain (and while you watch, keep the banking bailouts, growing disparity between rich and poor, government censorship and gagging, and the near dictatorial pronouncements and oppressive, repressive laws and practices coming from both down south and here from Harper’s Canada, in the back of your mind):
After researching what the G-20 does, I have to say, I really don’t think that they’re this evil body of leaders bent on taking over the world that some people suggest. I mean, I suppose it’s possible, and I guess you need to have some megalomaniacal qualities in order to get to that level in global politics, but it just seems like they spend most of their time sitting around eating munchies and making nice-to-do lists. I can’t begrudge them that, it’s what I aspire to myself.
But does it deserve the amount of money that our government is throwing at it? Will the, at present, C$1.2 billion be the sound investment that they’re saying it is?
Yes, that’s billion. I know, seems pretty high to me too, but to be honest I’ve never held an international summit so I wouldn’t know how much to ask for at the door. And, yeah, if we’re going to have global leaders here, we should probably buy them the good munchies, not the dollar-store crap. Presumably this second option is what was chosen in Pittsburgh, the location of the last summit, where they spent US$12.2 million (roughly C$13 million).
The costs over the past few summits (these are estimates because, apparently, these figures didn’t warrant detailed tracking or further study), are:
It’s estimated that about half of this, or C$500 million, is being spent on security. That’s gonna be some security!
“What’d you do on the weekend?”
“Not much. Raped and murdered a couple of women, had a few beers with friends on Saturday night; nothin’ special. You?”
“Oh, you know, same-old same-old. Finally got that raw fecal smell out of the apartment on Sunday; turned out that I hadn’t flushed in three weeks. Can you believe that shit?”
“I hear ya! So, did you read about that guy that got shot…”
It’s the same old boring water-cooler conversation every Monday, more or less. If it’s not about Oprah and her hijinx or the smell of poop in one’s apartment, it’s about the latest homicide in the city. It does seem like someone’s getting shot or stabbed almost every day recently, doesn’t it? In April there were 4 murders in an area stretching from Mississauga to Durham. June’s looking a bit busier so far.
I wonder if Toronto Police will be able to cope. Then again, some old photos I’d seen in the Toronto Archives remind me that men of the Service’s past have done far greater with far less. Submitted for your consideration:
(a lot of photos in this one…)
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer