If Ford had A. Smith whacked, some people in their mutual inner circles would know. There's almost no sense in doing something like that if it doesn't also "send a message" (it certainly didn't scare anyone into destroying the crack video). Abdi and Siad were having the "Ya, he said I’ll give you $5,000 and a car, WTF is that?†conversation literally 13.5 hours before Smith was shot. They didn't have another conversation the next day saying "oh man this guy's serious, let's not f*ck with him!"
A few weeks later, others took Ford's cellphone and then haggled with Lisi over how much weed it would take for them to give it back! Would you do that with the property of a guy who you think had someone gunned down in the middle of downtown? Basso called him a f*cking idiot. She worried about the cops coming around every day, screwing up their 'business' but she didn't think RoFo was going to come over and kill them. Siad continued to try to sell the video; he seemed more worried about what other dealers would do to him (either because they don't approve of him blackmailing a good customer like Rofo, or because they wanted the lucrative vid for themselves) than being worried about the Fords.