Honestly, if you lived in Toronto back in 2013, you remember exactly where you were when the news broke. It felt like the city had collectively tripped into a fever dream. One minute, Rob Ford was the bombastic, "stop the gravy train" mayor who just wanted to cut taxes and coach high school football. The next? Reports were surfacing of a video of Rob Ford smoking crack that sounded so absurd it had to be a hoax.
But it wasn't.
What followed was a year-long tailspin of denials, police surveillance, and late-night talk show jokes that made Toronto the center of the world for all the wrong reasons. Even now, over a decade later, the details of how that footage surfaced—and the violence surrounding it—are darker than most people realize. It wasn't just a "troubled politician" story. It was a collision of municipal power and the city's gang underworld.
The Night in Etobicoke: Where the Video Came From
The footage wasn't a professional hit piece. It was captured on a cellphone on February 17, 2013. The setting was a bungalow on Windsor Road in Etobicoke, a place police later described as a "trap house" frequented by drug users.
Mohamed Siad, a member of the Dixon City Bloods, was the one holding the phone. He didn't just record a mayor in a "drunken stupor"—he essentially recorded a political death sentence.
In the video, Ford is seen slumped in a chair, holding a glass pipe and a lighter. He’s rambling. He uses homophobic slurs and racial epithets, even taking shots at Justin Trudeau, who was just a third-party leader back then. It was raw, it was ugly, and for months, it was the most famous piece of media that nobody had actually seen.
Why the Public Didn't See It for Years
Gawker and the Toronto Star broke the story in May 2013. John Cook from Gawker and Robyn Doolittle from the Star had both seen the footage in the back of a car in a parking lot. But they didn't own it.
Siad wanted money. Specifically, $100,000 to $200,000.
Gawker even started a "Crackstarter" campaign to crowdfund the cash.
They raised the money, but by the time they were ready to pay, the sellers had gone dark.
The reason for the silence was grim. Word of the video had reached the streets, and people were getting hurt. Anthony Smith, a young man who appeared in a now-infamous photo with Ford outside that same Etobicoke house, was shot and killed in downtown Toronto just weeks after the video was recorded.
"I Have Smoked Crack Cocaine"
For six months, Rob Ford looked into every camera lens in Canada and lied. "I do not use crack cocaine," he said. He called the reporters "pathological liars." His brother, Doug Ford, stood by him, blaming a "media lynch mob."
Then came Halloween 2013.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair held a press conference that changed everything. He announced that during a massive gang sweep called Project Traveller, police had recovered a deleted video file from a hard drive.
It was the video.
Blair admitted he was "disappointed" as a citizen. Five days later, cornered by a crush of reporters outside his office, Ford finally cracked.
"Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine," he blurted out.
He followed it up with one of the most bizarre justifications in political history. He said he probably did it during one of his "drunken stupors" about a year prior. He claimed he wasn't lying before—he just said reporters "didn't ask the correct questions."
It was a masterclass in semantics that fooled absolutely nobody, yet somehow, his approval ratings actually went up.
The Shadowy Role of Sandro Lisi
If you want to understand why the video of Rob Ford smoking crack didn't lead to immediate handcuffs, you have to look at Alexander "Sandro" Lisi.
Lisi was Ford’s friend, driver, and, according to police documents, his connection to the drug world. While the world was laughing at Ford's patois-heavy rants at Steak Queen, the police were running "Project Brazen 2." They had Cessnas in the air following Ford and Lisi to remote parks where they would swap packages.
Lisi was eventually charged with extortion. The police alleged he tried to get the crack video back using threats and "muscle." The legal proceedings dragged on for years, eventually ending with the charges being stayed or dropped after Ford’s death, but the wiretap transcripts revealed a mayor who was deeply entangled with people the police had been watching for years.
Why the Scandal Refuses to Fade
Most politicians would have been gone in a week. Ford stayed for the full term.
He was stripped of his powers by City Council, essentially becoming a mayor in name only. He went to rehab in 2014 after another video surfaced showing him using drugs. Even as he battled the cancer that would eventually take his life in 2016, "Ford Nation" remained loyal.
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Why? Because for a lot of people, the crack use was a personal failing, not a political one. They liked that he returned their phone calls. They liked that he fought with the "elites" downtown. To his supporters, the media's obsession with the video was proof that the establishment was out to get him.
But looking back with clear eyes, the scandal was a tragedy. It wasn't just about a man with an addiction. It was about the degradation of the office of the Mayor. It showed how easily a city's leadership could be compromised by the criminal element when a leader loses control of their personal life.
What We Learned (The Actionable Part)
If you're looking for the "so what" of this whole saga, it’s about transparency and the evolution of digital evidence.
- Digital Footprints are Permanent: The "deleted" video was recovered from a hard drive by forensic experts. If it exists on a phone, it exists forever.
- Crisis Management has Changed: Ford's "deny until you can't" strategy actually worked for his specific base, but it paralyzed the city's governance. Modern political crisis management now often favors the "over-share and apologize early" route to avoid a year-long bleed.
- The Media's Role: The Gawker/Star reporting was high-risk. It showed that sometimes, the "rumor" is the biggest news story in the country, even if the physical evidence is still under wraps.
The story of the video of Rob Ford smoking crack isn't a "fun" piece of trivia. It’s a case study in how populism, addiction, and the digital age can turn a G7 city upside down.
If you want to see the fallout for yourself, the court-released documents from Project Brazen 2 are still available in public archives. They paint a picture far more complex—and far more concerning—than any 30-second clip of a man with a pipe ever could. The real story was never the crack; it was the company the Mayor kept while the city wasn't looking.
To understand the full scope of the legal documents, you can look up the "ITO" (Information to Obtain) filings from the Lisi case. These 500-page monsters contain the actual police surveillance logs that show where the Mayor was going when he thought the cameras were off. Reading through those is the only way to see the full picture of what happened during those chaotic years in Toronto.