Scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford says he won’t resign or take a leave of absence, but he apologized for the first time for unspecified “mistakes” he has made and vowed to make changes in his life.

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“There’s no one to blame but myself, and I take full responsibility for it,” Ford said on his Sunday radio show, which is in progress on Newstalk 1010.

Ford did not immediately offer an explanation for his appearance in a video that appears to show him smoking crack cocaine, for his May denial of the video’s existence, or for the multiple secret meetings and clandestine exchanges he appears to have held with an accused drug dealer, Alexander “Sandro” Lisi, who has been charged with extortion for an alleged attempt to obtain the video.

Ford, like his lawyer before him, called on Police Chief Bill Blair to immediately release the video. “I believe that this video — I want the police chief, Bill Blair, to release this video, for every single person in the city to see,” Ford said.

Ford cannot be ousted unless he is imprisoned. His refusal to surrender his office even temporarily is likely to send councillors scrambling to come up with ways to escalate their efforts to get him to stand down.

He already faces intense pressure to step aside from his own aides, Conservative party officials, much of council, and the city’s business lobby. But Ford and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, fear that any hiatus would end his career.

Ford blasted the Bee Gees hit “Stayin’ Alive” in his Cadillac Escalade as he arrived at the Newstalk studio.

More to come.