Time to weigh in on this
anatomy of a bungled police investigation:
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2...tml?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Firstly this is obviously the Toronto Star doing damage control for Bill Blair. There is a growing chorus of criticism over how Blair has handled this investigation of the mayor and this is an attempt to blunt the criticism with "insight" provided by unnamed police sources. Many times they try to assure us the investigation was "by the book" . To counter criticism that the police allowed the mayor to drive around drunk we are told a couple of times that officers were under "strict orders" to "box in" the mayor if they suspected he was driving drunk and that the investigators had "nightmares" of the mayor driving over an 8 year old.
It would appear that the Toronto Star was ahead of the police investigators in conducting their parallel investigation and this may have compromised matters. The police surveillance measures could be characterized as too little too late but once again the unnamed police source tries to reassure us that they used "proper escalation" methods - that they didn't "overreach" and that their procedure were "top notch" because they had a homicide detective in charge of the investigation (this is laughable considering how miserable a track record TPS homicide has. Giroux himself seems to be particularly dimwitted from what I have seen in his investigation into the murdered Eritrean women).
A factor in allowing the Toronto Star to overtake the TPS investigators was the decision in May - to put the investigation of the mayor on the back-burner lest it "compromise" the Project Traveler investigation. I cannot see how conducting an investigation of the mayor would jeopardize the Traveler investigation. The cat was already out of the bag. The whole world knew about the crack video. The Dixon city goonies had to assume once word got out that the police would have focused attention on the mayor. The fateful decision to put the investigation of mayor Ford onto the back burner was made by staff supt. Jim Ramer. He along with Blair must be made to answer for this inexplicable decision. Remember the investigation of the mayor involved the potential that Anthony Smith was murdered for the crack video. Why would you put a murder investigation on hold pending the outcome of a guns and drugs investigation? Can Bill Blair walk and chew gum at the same time? Apparently not!
The fact that we have these leaks from inside the police department revealing details of an investigation that we are told is "ongoing" is very troubling in itsself! Is Bill Blair going to launch an internal investigation into who is leaking to the Toronto Star? If not we have to assume that Blair himself authorized the leak of this information as a way of exonerating the work of his officers. If in fact Blair is behind these leaks he should be charged under the police act and
immediately suspended pending the outcome (and ultimately fired and sent to prison).
Also troubling to me is the admission that police "hand-picked" the judge who signed the warrants. I had always suspected that this was going on and here we have proof. No doubt when a cop is charged with a crime the police "hand pick" a judge that will play along with them.
Some of the police insider information is complete B.S. such as the Pearson Tower contacting the Police saying "get your goddamned plane out of the way we have a 747 arriving in 3 minutes. There is absolutely no way that a pilot would be operating in controlled airspace without the consent of air traffic control. He/she would risk loosing their licence! This is complete garbage being spewed by police "sources".
There is no confirmation if a wiretap was placed on the mayor's or Lisi's phones. If there were wiretaps we are told this information would not be contained in the ITO since a superior court judge would have had to OK them. Also interesting is the fact that police have 90 days to wiretap a person before they inform the person that they were wiretapped. I wonder if Ford or Lisi have been informed by police that their phones were tapped? (Lisi is alleged to have used "burner" phones so good luck with that). If in fact a wiretap was not place on the mayors phone this is a major failure that cannot be explained away.
Finally, the last thing that I will call B.S. on is the assertion in the last paragraph that it was the magical recovery of the crack video (just one day before the ITO release) that allowed police to lay charges of extortion. Just as police do not need to have a body to lay murder charges - if they had evidence that Lisi extorted persons for the video - they do not actually need to have the video to lay charges.