TORONTO

Mayor Rob Ford ignored questions about his own connections to alleged drug dealers and gang members while visiting the site of one of the city’s worst mass shootings on the second anniversary of the tragedy.

Ford arrived on Danzig Street Wednesday just as a community barbecue and “celebration” to pay tribute to the lives of the victims was wrapping up. He got out of his black SUV and was greeted by a crowd of people wanting pictures. But the mayor refused to answer questions about his connections to drug-dealing gangs, the kind who shot up Danzig Street in July 2012.

“We have to support the people who live in these communities,” he told a small group of reporters. “No one supports them more than I do. I’ve proven it over the past 14 years.”

Ford instead focused on a visit to a nearby Toronto Community Housing Corporation that he’d made just prior to arriving at the event.

“No one can say I don’t support these people in this community,” he said. “Not just here, right across the city.”

On July 16, 2012, a community barbecue erupted in chaotic gunfire. Shyanne Charles, 14, and Joshua Yasay, 23, were killed. Twenty-two others were wounded.

Ford wasn’t the only mayoral candidate to mark the anniversary. John Tory and Karen Stintz attended a ceremony earlier in the day.

But Councillor Paula Fletcher said Ford shouldn’t have attended the event given his ties with alleged gangsters outlined by Toronto Police through Project Brazen 2 court documents and his own admission to using crack cocaine and buying illegal drugs.

“I think the mayor shouldn’t have gone there,” Fletcher told the Toronto Sun. “Going to Danzig is a mistake.”

“You can’t have it both ways — you can’t be part of it and then crusading to stop it … You can’t technically be condoning guns and gangs and then going out saying how terrible it is that people have been shot and killed.”

Fletcher — a vocal political critic of Ford at City Hall — said she’s willing to forgive the mayor for a lot of things but not his refusal to speak with police or his “tacit involvement” with alleged criminals.

“I can’t forgive him that he’s been involved with guns and gangs, making them seem cool and as if it is a natural part of life in Toronto,” she said. “I think it has set back our work to deal with young people and guns a long way.”

— With files from Don Peat