Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who stopped smoking crack cocaine last week, told staffers he knew the exact location of the video that showed him smoking crack—naming two units at an apartment complex in northwest Toronto, the Toronto Star reports.The day after Gawker broke the story that a video of Ford smoking crack was for sale, the mayor held what the Star describes as an "unusual" meeting.Toronto Mayor Rob Ford told senior aides not to worry about a video appearing to show him smoking crack cocaine because he knew where it was, sources told the Star.Ford then blurted out the address of two 17th-floor units — 1701 and 1703 — at a Dixon Rd. apartment complex, to the shock of staffers at a city hall meeting almost two weeks ago, the sources said.The mayor cited “our contacts” as the source of his information, according to insiders familiar with the unusual May 17 session in his office.
Ford and others in attendance at the meeting didn't respond to the Star's request for comment. Reporters who visited the two units were told that "numerous young men are seen coming and going there at all hours of the night and day," but that no one had seen Ford, who is hard to miss. (A recent shooting outside one of the apartments was "an accidental shooting involving people who were drunk.") After the meeting, Ford staffer David Price asked (now-fired) chief of staff Mark Towhey (who was not in attendance) "what we would do" if "hypothetically" they knew where the video was, and suggested that one of the men in the now-infamous photograph of Ford that accompanied the original Gawker article had been killed over the video.Towhey suggested they go to police. Price demurred ("sources," he responded when Towhey asked where he learned of the tape's location). The next day, Towhey told police what he had heard from Price. Toronto Police have assigned two detectives to investigate. Rob Ford is still Mayor of Toronto. On Monday, Gawker's efforts to raise money to buy the tape through crowd-funding reached its goal.