TORONTO – Mayor Rob Ford’s name came up in police wiretaps but his voice itself wasn’t heard, documents released Wednesday evening reveal.
Additional information from a Toronto police investigation into Ford’s friend Alexander “Sandro” Lisi sheds new light on the mayor’s connection to people implicated in a wide-scale gun-and-drug raid in the city’s west end. But it leaves plenty unanswered, and more redacted documents to be debated in court.
Lisi has been charged with extortion, accused of using threats in ultimately unsuccessful efforts to obtain a video of Ford smoking what appears to be crack cocaine.
Hours after reports of that video first surfaced in the Toronto Star and Gawker, police documents state Lisi placed calls to an anger management centre and Liban Siyad, one of the alleged victims Lisi’s accused of extorting. Lisi also called and texted multiple times with “Juiceman,” someone associated with the Project Traveller raids, and called Fabio Basso, who owned the home at 15 Windsor Drive outside which Ford was photographed with three men implicated in the raids, police documents reveal.
Media lawyers were in court Wednesday arguing for the release of information in the blacked-out documents, known as an information to obtain, or ITO.
The documents that have yet to be unsealed include at least 20 pages of secretly recorded wire taps relating to Project Traveller, a guns-and-gangs investigation that focused on the apartment complex in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, where police believe the Ford video was kept.
These wiretaps picked up thousands of conversations until they were ended in mid-June, documents reveal. While “the mayor’s name was mentioned in the wiretap conversations,” the documents state, referencing police sources, “the mayor himself was not captured on these recordings.”
Documents released Wednesday also state that a police source sent them a now-infamous photo of Ford posing with three men the police source said were known to be involved in the Dixon Bloods. “The source found it amusing that the males happened to get Rob Ford to pose with them in a photograph,” the documents state.
Ford has said the photograph was a one-time thing and that he had never seen those young men before or after the photo was taken.
He has refused to take a leave of absence or resign and has called on police to release a video he previously said did not exist. Police have refused, citing an ongoing investigation.
READ MORE: Police documents shed new light on Rob Ford’s alleged crack video
New police documents filed Monday suggested Ford may have used drugs more recently than he admitted. Ford said earlier this month to having smoked crack cocaine roughly a year ago in what he called one of his “drunken stupors.”
But a document alleges a video appearing to show the mayor smoking crack cocaine was shot earlier this year.
“The video was filmed surreptitiously in the month of February 2013 of the mayor without his knowledge,” reads the document, part of a drug case against Lisi.
READ MORE: Reality check: Which of Rob Ford’s latest claims are lies?
With files from James Armstrong, Global News staff and The Canadian Press
READ: Newly released documents from Toronto Police Lisi-Ford investigation
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