Total Pageviews

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Video Shows Toronto’s Mayor Using Jamaican Patois in Obscene Rant About Police Surveillance


Two months after he claimed to have embraced sobriety, Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto was caught on video late Monday complaining about police surveillance of him and his associates in a drunken, obscenity-laced rant peppered with Jamaican patois.

As The Toronto Star reports, the mayor’s brother, Doug Ford, initially told reporters that while the 66-second clip uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday “obviously” showed his brother, it could not have been recorded on Monday at a fast-food restaurant as the anonymous videographer claimed, since his brother, who slurred his words in the rambling monologue, no longer drinks or uses drugs.

An excerpt from video posted on YouTube on Tuesday that appears to show Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, using Jamaican patois in an obscenity-laced monologue at a fast-food restaurant.

Doug Ford, who serves on the City Council, said that his brother “hasn’t taken a drink” since November, when he was forced to admit that he had smoked crack cocaine “in one of my drunken stupors,” after reporters and the city’s police chief described viewing video of the mayor using the drug.

Within hours, however, that explanation was no longer operative.

After evidence appeared online showing that the mayor had posed for a photograph late Monday at the Steak Queen location seen in the video, he admitted to reporters that he had been drinking and was speaking to “some personal friends” when the video was recorded. Audio of the mayor’s remarks to reporters was posted on Soundcloud by Daniel Dale, The Star’s acting city hall bureau chief.