Earlier today, we published the massive documents that comprised the Information to Obtain a warrant (ITO) for the arrest of Ford’s alleged drug dealer buddy Sandro Lisi.
Ford figures very prominently in the volumes, which detail a months-long police investigation to get to the bottom of the you-know-what video scandal. Now that we’ve had a day to plough through it all, we present to you a curated selection of some of the more curious tidbits contained therein.
(Just remember: although these things have been sworn before a judge by a police officer, they have not been proven in court.)
About Lisi and the efforts to surveil him
• From a cop interview with David Price: Lisi is related to someone who went to high school with Doug Ford.
• Countersurveillance Lisi was conducting from his residence meant cops couldn’t get close enough to him without blowing their cover. Enter plane.
• Court documents say Lisi is under a firearms prohibition for life after 2003 convictions for threatening death, assault and criminal harassment.
• Fellow to whom Lisi’s Range Rover is registered survived a knife attack, involving several stabs in the back, in 2001. Referred to as a “cocaine user.”
• Lisi’s “counter surveillance manoeuvres” to shake cops on his tail included turning 10-minute car trips into 45-minute goose chases.
• Lisi was followed by cops to an address on Lamella Road that had been the target of a 2010 drug squad bust of pot, meth and ecstasy. Police scanned it from the air but saw “no abnormal heat signatures.”
• On July 18, cops installed a remote-controlled “pole camera” outside Lisi’s residence.
• Lisi made a stop at Doug Holyday’s campaign office “for a few moments” while under police surveillance.
• On August 8, police installed a tracking device on Lisi’s Range Rover.
• Lisi called the cops on August 13 at 2:29 am to report a white minivan circling in the vicinity of the mayor’s place. He refused to give his name. Police speculate that the van was the CBC’s, which had photographed the mayor at the Esso station down the street from his house. It was night the mayor showed up to the Taste of the Danforth.
About Ford’s meetings with Lisi
• Lisi and Ford seem to have known cops were surveilling them, according to observations recorded by cops outside Lisi’s house on Sunday, June 16.
• July 11: Lisi meets Ford at the gas station at the corner of the mayor’s street and drops a manila envelope into the mayor’s SUV while the mayor is inside the shop.
• Police retrieved a bag tossed by the mayor into the garbage after surveillance on July 28 and discovered two empty bottles of vodka.
• The school parking lot where Ford met with Lisi is on Trehorne, across the street from the mayor’s sister’s place.
• The mayor knew he was being watched by the cops, which may explain why there’re no direct exchanges but rather Lisi dropping envelopes in Ford’s car.
• There was a “dramatic change” in Lisi’s calls to the mayor in June-July. Lisi is no longer calling the mayor’s cell but rather the OnStar in his SUV.
• On August 13, cops follow the mayor and Lisi to Weston Wood Park, where they stayed for approximately an hour. A vodka and juice bottle were later seized.
About Ford’s staff
• David Price, Ford’s head of logistics (aka bodyguard), was interviewed by cops at police headquarters on June 19, where he identified Lisi from a photo.
• The mayor’s former chief of staff, Mark Towhey, had “concerns” about Lisi and dispatched David Price to find out more about him.
• A weird thing about the Lisi documents: how often the mayor’s likable special assistant / receptionist Tom Beyer turns up as a seeming go-between.
• From cop interview with ex-Ford staffer Chris Fickle: “Lisi may be the person who provides the Mayor with marihuana [sic] and possibly cocaine.”
About alleged gang involvement
• Dixon City Bloods gang members hung out at 15 Windsor, home of Ford’s high school friend Fabio Basso – “often to ‘chop’ crack.”
• On the day Anthony Smith was killed, the mayor and Lisi spoke seven times on the phone. The mayor made five of those calls.
About the apparent search for the video
• The mayor and Lisi spoke 11 times on May 22, the day after cops say a home invasion took place at Fabio Basso’s home on Windsor.
• Courts documents show Lisi had phone communication with Mohamed Siad, the man allegedly in possession of the Ford crack video.
