Our collective dismay about Mayor Ford smoking crack has overshadowed a very important racial subtext to this “crack video” of the mayor of Canada’s largest and arguably most diverse city (“Diversity Our Strength,” to cite the city’s motto). With the latest video released, we see the mayor impersonating Jamaican patois, and apparently calling Chief Bill Blair a “bumbaclot.”

Mayor Ford is no stranger to racist remarks, and he appears to have an affinity for impersonating accents, since we learned in the documents in Project Brazen 2 that he called a cab driver a “Paki” and made fake language sounds whilst tossing business cards into him.

But as we learn more about the mayor’s feelings towards marginalized people, the “crack video” becomes even more distressing: does the mayor see communities of colour as the proverbial “whipping boy”?

Allow me to start with a cast of characters:

1. Rob Ford- Mayor of Toronto

2. Doug Ford- Mayor Ford’s brother

3. Mark Towhey- Ford’s Former Chief of Staff

4. Sandro Lisi- Mayor’s close friend and driver

5. Anthony Smith, Muhammed Khattak, and Monir Kasim- Dixon City Bloods Gang Members, once photographed with Mayor Ford

6. Fabio Basso- Owner of Home at 15 Windsor Dr., where Ford was photographed with Khattak, Smith and Kasim

7. Liban Siyad- Dixon City Blood Member

8. Mohammed Siad- Dixon City Blood Member, also in possession of the original “crack video”

9. Nisar Hashimi and Hanad Mohammed- Alleged shooters of Anthony Smith and Muhammed Khattak

In the first crack video, Ford allegedly calls the youth in the infamous football program he works with “just fucking minorities,” but that is just the very tip of the iceberg.

Much more distressingly, it seems that young men of colour continue to take the fall for Ford.

Starting with May 2013, when Crackgate 1.0 took place, a photograph of Mayor Ford was released with three young men. Doug Ford (always jumping to his brother’s defense, it seems, when it comes to issues of race) feels it was racist to question why the mayor might be in a photograph with known gang associates (Dixon City Bloods, based in Toronto’s Little Mogadishu). Doug Ford instead explains quite simply on the brothers’ weekly radio show, “I’ve been getting calls from some councillors too, which I think this is absolutely disgusting and racist, that what is Rob doing with his arms around two young Black men? That’s a racist comment. Rob has taken thousands of pictures with young Black men, with their hats on, with their little funny signs and everything else.”

I’ll let that comment speak for itself (ahem, #racist). More importantly, one young man in this photograph, Anthony Smith, was fatally shot just a couple weeks later, apparently over a turf war and by a man with whom he had previous beef. Interestingly, Smith was shot at Loki Lounge, located on King St., in Toronto’s Entertainment District. The Dixon City Bloods have territory at Islington and Kipling, much farther west. Also strangely coincidental, Muhammed Khattak, another young man in the same photograph with Ford, was shot in the incident as well. This begs the question: was Mayor Rob Ford calling the shots?

Could Rob Ford be one of the biggest gang kingpins in the city?

Mark Towhey, former Chief of Staff for Rob Ford (Full disclosure: Towhey was fired by the Mayor’s office a week after the video surfaced in May) has now spoken out to CBC’s Day 6, saying that a staff person had told him that the crack video had been linked to a murder. Towhey, at the time unsure of how credible this information might be, did take this information to the police. We now know, in retrospect, that this murder was Anthony Smith. New documents released in Project Brazen 2 confirm that there appears to be a connection between the contents of Smith’s cellphone (likely the video of Rob Ford “smoking his rocks”) and the murder. The cellphone has been missing since the shooting.

The other two young men in the infamous photo, Muhammad Khattak and Monir Kasim, were arrested as part of Project Traveller, the Toronto Police’s operation on guns, gangs and drugs in the GTA. Muhammed Khattak, as previously mentioned, was also injured in the same shooting that killed his associate, Anthony Smith. Khattak is currently on bail, as his two charges from Project Traveller are his only criminal charges. He has no previous record.

Nasir Hashimi, confessed shooter of Muhammed Khattak and Anthony Smith, is now sentenced to nine years in jail after pleading guilty to the shooting. Particularly of note is that the plea deal has essentially ended the case against Hashimi, and evidence collected in this case will never see the inside of a courtroom. There was a co-accused in the case, Hanad Mohammed, but since Hashimi fired the fatal shots, the case against Mohammed will probably be dropped. In other words, it is likely that if there is any evidence that implicates Rob Ford, it will never be on public record. (Since this arrest, there was a bizarre incident involving Hanad Mohammed and Hanad Hussein, who was thrown from a balcony. The police deny a link to Ford, but at this point, it seems Ford’s tentacles seem to touch several gang-related deaths in Toronto. Not only that, Hussein’s cellphone as been missing since the incident, not unlike Anthony Smith’s.)

At this point, it is also important to note that another Dixon City Blood, Mohammed Siad, was also in possession of the crack video. According to the police wiretaps, he had been offered $5000.00 and a car for the video by , but, being an arguably much savvier business man than that, he told a fellow Blood he would be asking for $100,000-$150,000.00. His ambition didn’t pay off however, he was allegedly kidnapped by his gang associates and pressured not to release the video. When arrested in Project Traveller, he told police he had a copy of the crack video and attempted, unsuccessfully, to sell it. Siad was then coincidentally stabbed repeatedly while incarcerated. Lucky to have survived, he awaits trial now.

Now, with 2013’s arrest of the mayor’s associate and driver, Alexander “Sandro” Lisi, we know that on the day that rumours of the video originally surfaced, Lisi made several phone calls. Many were to known gang members, and several of them were present while Ford smoked “dugga” (marijuana) and “hezza” (heroin). Again, I think that perhaps this makes the timing of Smith and Khattak’s shooting very suspicious.

· First, Lisi called the owner of the home (15 Windsor Drive, an alleged “crack house”) where Ford was photographed with Smith, Khattak and Kasim. His name is Fabio Basso.

· Lisi then called a known Dixon City Blood member, Liban Siyad, who was since also arrested in Project Traveller. It also appears Siyad was the dealer who brought drugs to 15 Windsor Dr., the night the first crack video was shot.

· Lisi then spoke to Mohammed Siad, 20 minutes before he calls the mayor.

Smith, Khattak, Hashimi, Kasim, Siad.

We have watched young Black men take the fall (at least once, fatally) for Ford since May. Cellphone videos continue to implicate Ford by immortalizing his bizarre antics, and they continue to go missing when violent incidences related to Ford’s aquaintances occur. Ford may come across as a bumbling, stumbling, buffoon, but if I were a young Black man in Toronto, I would certainly be keeping my distance from the city’s leader.