On June 13, hours after hundreds of officers in riot gear broke down doors in a gun and gang raid that would become inextricably linked with Mayor Rob Ford, Police Chief Bill Blair delivered this tightly scripted message.

“I want to assure the people of Toronto that all of the evidence collected throughout the course of this investigation has been secured,” he said at a press conference ostensibly called for the Project Traveller raids.

“All of the evidence will come out in court, where it belongs.”

Refusing to bite on a torrent of questions that followed (most the same one, slightly reworded), Blair would not confirm what police sources were saying — that the mayor was linked to the probe because the suspected gang members being wiretapped happened to also be the individuals trying to peddle the “crack video.”

“A lot of unhappy people in this room,” Blair said to a few frustrated reporters on his way out of the Toronto police press gallery.

The charged press conference, in retrospect, was a fraction of a much larger picture. While everyone was focused on the Project Traveller connection, Blair knew that a separate spinoff investigation was already underway. It would target the city’s chief magistrate.

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Graphic: The allegations against Ford

Players in the scandal

In delivering that scripted message, the city’s top cop was heeding the advice of senior lawyers working out of the Ministry of the Attorney General’s head office. They would continue to consult at critical junctures in the months ahead.

What follows is a behind-the-scenes look at how the probe, dubbed Project Brazen 2, developed. There might come a time when much more will be known about an investigation police say is “ongoing.” None of the key police and legal players involved would speak to the Star about their roles, but two sources with knowledge of the investigation and who have read search warrant materials agreed to fill in some key blanks on the condition they not be identified.

Among them:

Police, correctly anticipating intense media interest, carefully wrote and partitioned a lengthy affidavit detailing their investigation into the mayor’s friend Alexander “Sandro” Lisi and Ford so that contentious parts, such as wiretap evidence, could be cleanly censored without affecting the narrative.

Detectives conducted a “by the books” investigation, led by a top homicide detective, anticipating that all of the details could potentially become public through the courts.

Police sought out a respected, moderate judge to handle search warrants and properly escalated their surveillance tactics as required, knowing that any overstepping might cause later problems.

A surveillance crew was given strict orders to “box in” the mayor if drinking and driving was suspected.

Follow your instincts

Deputy Chief Mark Saunders, one of Blair’s most trusted men, and Staff Supt. Jim Ramer, head of detective services, first approached Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux in May, after investigators in Project Traveller picked up talk of the “crack video” on wiretap recordings, even before media reports about the video.

The cops were “shocked” and “appalled” when links between the video and a group of alleged gang members under surveillance for suspected gun and drug trafficking emerged, one law enforcement source told the Star.

Giroux, a top homicide detective often tapped for sensitive cases, was asked to look into criminality in the mayor’s office. He was told to follow his instincts and go “in the direction it takes you.”

He handpicked his small five-person squad out of headquarters, not local divisions where police had interacted with the mayor and his family on several previous occasions.

That included fellow homicide investigator Joyce Schertzer, one of the investigators on the Anthony Smith murder case who had detailed knowledge of some of the key players.

Giroux had worked alongside Det.-Const. David Lavallee and Det.-Const. Amy Davey before, on a team that laid more than 250 charges against black-clad vandals responsible for smashed windows and torched police cars during the G20.

A surveillance team headed by Det.-Sgt. Domenic Sinopoli and a civilian file manager offered support.

There were grave concerns that asking questions about the mayor could compromise Project Traveller, an investigation with a $1-million price tag and, at that point, in its most crucial stage of surveillance.

(Legally, police, armed with a special wiretap warrant, can listen in on private telephone conversations and monitor text messages for 90 days before they have to inform their targets. The Project Traveller wiretaps began March 18, according to police documents.)

In May, just days after the Star and Gawker broke news of the now infamous video showing Ford smoking what appeared to be crack cocaine from a glass pipe, Ramer asked Giroux to interview the mayor’s then chief of staff Mark Towhey and logistics director David Price about a tip that came into the office. Someone had received information that the video might have been on a phone stolen from Smith the night he was murdered.

Smith was one of three young men with Ford in a photo given to the Star by one of the men trying to sell the “crack video.”

The next day, Ramer, Giroux’s immediate boss and the man he would report to on Project Brazen 2, made the call that they were to back off police interviews about allegations that Ford smoked crack cocaine or the possibility that the video was connected to Smith’s death until Project Traveller was completed.

Concerns that the probe could be compromised were only heightened three days later, on May 21, when one of the Project Traveller accused, Abdullahi Harun, was shot in the leg on the 17th floor of a Dixon Rd. highrise. Harun, a man police believe to be one of two men trying to sell the “crack video,” was shot just down the hall from unit 1703. Sources have told the Star that Ford blurted out that unit number as a possible location of the video this spring.

(It’s unclear why Harun was shot. Neighbourhood sources say his shooting was an accident. A resident on the floor, who was peering through a peephole that night, told police that he saw a half-dozen young men arguing before hearing two to three shots.)

Giroux and his team backed away from the Ford investigation, until the June 13 pre-dawn raids, when police could proudly display their catch — some 50 arrests, 40 guns, $3 million worth of drugs.

Recently released police documents show just how quickly Project Brazen 2 escalated in the days after Blair’s managed presser.

Between June 18 and July 2, Giroux’s team, based at an off-site location sources refuse to disclose, canvassed and interviewed nearly 30 people. They went to great lengths to ensure everyone was videotaped because they didn’t know where the investigation would take them.

Several of the Project Traveller accused, then behind bars, refused to co-operate with investigators, including Mohamed Siad, the man who was in possession of the “crack video.” (One simply laughed when Davey informed him they were investigating the mayor.) Ford’s former staffers painted a picture of a man with potentially serious substance abuse issues.

Choosing a judge

When police needwarrants, they usually begin by going to see a justice of the peace. In Project Brazen 2, investigators, knowing that their probe would be long and complex and likely require more intrusive investigative techniques, such as vehicle trackers, decided instead to go to a provincial court judge, who has more powers.

And in this case, police wanted a single judge to take carriage of the warrants, for efficiency. A single judge would be up to speed on everything police had done. That also lessens the chances of details of the investigation leaking out.

Police hand-picked the judge used for warrants in Project Brazen 2. They chose Ontario Court Justice David Cole, a well-respected judge who works mainly out of a courthouse in Etobicoke.

Before becoming a judge in 1991, Cole, as a lawyer, counted nurse Susan Nelles — wrongfully charged in the deaths of four babies in 1981 — as a client. In 1995, Cole co-authored the Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System. In legal circles, he is seen as a “moderate” judge when it comes to sentencing, and he lectures and teaches on the subject.

Cole was first called upon on June 25, 2013, with a request to grant access to Lisi’s telephone records.

The phone number associated with Lisi came onto police radar in April, when he allegedly attempted to retrieve a cellphone. Lisi placed calls to a young man linked to Project Traveller called “Juice-Man.” Sources say the cellphone belonged to the mayor and was the source of much panic.

There was also the flurry of phone calls from Lisi’s phone made to Project Traveller targets Liban Siyad and Mohamed Siad in the three days after the video story broke. Sources in the Dixon Rd. neighbourhood where many of the alleged gang members lived say guys were getting threatening phone calls from someone who, inexplicably, identified themselves as being from the “military” or “navy.”

Surveillance, counter-surveillance

Around the same timeGiroux and his team began their attempts to interview alleged gang members and mayoral staffers and ask for Lisi’s phone records, Det.-Sgt. Sinopoli and his surveillance team were tasked with watching Lisi.

During the weekend following the Project Traveller raids, Sinopoli and his crew, waiting in different cars, parked outside Lisi’s parents’ home, where Lisi lives in the basement. It would only be a day before they spotted Ford’s black Escalade in the driveway.

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On that Monday, June 17, Sinopoli sent Giroux an email: The “counter-surveillance” measures Lisi was taking up while out driving were a problem. His team couldn’t get in close enough to follow him without compromising the investigation.

Sinopoli suggested a plane, or working towards putting a tracking warrant on Lisi’s car (seen as a more intrusive investigative approach).

At the beginning of July, Sinopoli and his team were also tasked with following Ford, though there are only two clear examples in recently released police documents of the mayor being their primary target.

On the first day, July 2, Sinopoli and his crew watched Ford stop at an LCBO.

Recent revelations, including an apparent admission by Ford of drinking and driving, have raised questions about what police knew and what they were or weren’t doing about the mayor’s potential drinking and driving.

The surveillance team, one source said, was under strict instructions to “box in” the mayor if they suspected he had been drinking. Some had nightmares about a drunk-driving mayor killing an 8-year-old while under police watch.

On July 3, the surveillance crew reported losing sight of Ford once he left city hall in the afternoon, according to police documents.

This turned out to be the same day both Blair and Ford attended an Independence Day party hosted by the U.S. consulate.

Blair “made a concerted effort to stay on the other side of the room,” according to a source who was present that day. “He looked uncomfortable,” the source said of the chief.

Police documents show that as the investigationmoved through July, Giroux’s team homed in on Lisi and the mayor, meticulously attempting to identify associates they came in contact with. They ran licence plates, examined surveillance photos, ran criminal background checks, analyzed phone records and tracked Lisi day and night, at times remotely from a camera mounted on a pole outside his home.

What they did not do was overreach, sources say.

Usually, police climb a ladder of investigative techniques that increase in terms of intrusiveness as required. They usually exhaust the less intrusive techniques before asking a judge for more. That was the case with Project Brazen 2.

Police have been criticized by some for not doing more in the investigation, but what they were doing was a proper escalation of techniques, according to a source with knowledge of the probe and who has read search warrant materials. The police plane, for example, was used to follow the movement of vehicles before police went to the judge for a warrant to use vehicle tracking devices.

The plane would become an issue.

A circling plane makes noise. And in parts of Etobicoke close to Pearson airport, its flight path conflicted at times with commercial flights, said the source.

“The air traffic controllers at Pearson were sort of getting in touch with the plane and saying, ‘Get your goddamned plane out of there, we’ve got a 747 arriving in three minutes,’” the source said. Neighbourhood residents complained as well and threatened to send pictures of the plane to the Toronto Star.

What police brought Cole was top-notch material to support the warrants they sought, which is to be expected from homicide detectives who out of habit do everything “by the books” because their cases receive the most scrutiny from talented criminal defence lawyers — and judges.

The nearly 500-page affidavit police swore out in support of the warrants that were executed was also written with the anticipation that the investigative narrative would be either disclosed over the course of a trial or be opened up by media lawyers representing clients keenly interested in what police had learned about the mayor of Toronto.

On July 31, Cole signed warrants that would allow officers to track who Lisi was calling (and, in turn, who called him), pinpoint his whereabouts when he made and received calls in real time and install a tracking device on his car. Once the tracker was installed, Det.-Const. Lavallee would produce daily tracking reports for the team.

“I think anybody who reads the search warrant will see how meticulous the homicide squad was,” said the source with knowledge of the probe. “And that’s quite consistent with what they usually do. They do it by the book.”

The investigators, said the source, “did not take shortcuts.” Anything improper, they knew, could later be seen as potentially biased.

Police have also been criticized for not stopping the mayor and Lisi while observing a series of clandestine meetings that detailed the swapping of manila envelopes.

“No way” were lead investigators going to stop the mayor if all that was in the envelope was a bottle of vodka, said one source.

Focus on Lisi

As the investigationrolled into August, in a clear case of reporters and police asking the same questions of the same people, media outlets started zeroing in on Lisi.

In mid-August, an ongoing Star investigation revealed Lisi was the man who was aggressively attempting to obtain the “crack video” in the days after stories of its existence broke.

After that, Lisi’s behaviour vis-à-vis the mayor changed, according to one source. Giroux and his team had to regroup.

On Aug. 21, Giroux had a meeting with the drug squad. He handed them a file, so they could begin an undercover operation into suspected drug dealing at Richview Cleaners, a location his team had observed Lisi visit and make calls to on numerous occasions. The drug team was to target the man behind the counter, Jamshid Bahrami, and give their updates to Giroux. Bahrami would later tell the undercover officer that one of his connections was a guy named Sandro who he described as the “mayor’s bodyguard.”

Giroux and his team went back to Cole on Aug. 30. They were granted access to surreptitiously enter two of Lisi’s cars and a nearby garage and search, seize or take pictures. Just over two weeks later, while Ford and Lisi drove off together and parked at a nearby high school, police secretly searched the van and found a marijuana cigarette, which they seized.

It’s unclear if police ever requested tracking devices or asked to surreptitiously enter any vehicles or homes related to the mayor. It’s also unknown if there was a request to wiretap Lisi or the mayor’s phone, a request that would be made of a Superior Court judge and would not be disclosed in recently released police documents.

In the end, it was the undercover drug investigation, sparked when the undercover officer dropped off a shirt with a package of rolling papers slipped into a front pocket, that would lead to Lisi’s Oct. 1 arrest for marijuana trafficking and possession.

“It wasn’t going to get any better,” one source said of why Lisi was arrested when he was, and on relatively low-level drug charges. The evidence was there.

By the end of the month, investigators, using data recovery technology, would discover the “crack video” buried deep on the laptop hard drive of one of the Project Traveller accused they arrested on June 13, the very same day Blair delivered his tightly scripted promise that “evidence has been secured.”

With the video in hand, police could now charge Lisi with extortion in relation to his attempts to get it back. Days later Mayor Rob Ford would admit to smoking crack cocaine.