Toronto police assigned 18 officers to investigate the break-in and assault at the Windsor Rd. crack house in the days following news that Mayor Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard) was caught on video smoking drugs with gang members.

Details from the “unusually significant police response” will be included in police records ordered released to the Star next month because the provincial information watchdog ruled there is “compelling public interest” in the documents’ disclosure.

Toronto police have been ordered to release the records no later than Nov. 5. The force is considering an appeal.

Using freedom of information legislation, the Star sought copies of the police occurrence report and officers’ notes from the home invasion on May 21, 2013, as part of its ongoing investigation into Mayor Ford and his associates.

The video of the mayor smoking a crack pipe was filmed in the rundown Etobicoke bungalow, home to longtime friends of Ford. In May, just days after the Star and Gawker revealed the existence of the crack video, a man forced his way inside the house and beat two of the residents with an extendable metal baton.

Toronto police initially refused to release the report and notes of 18 officers, arguing they contained personal, private information collected during an investigation of a crime.

The Star appealed the matter to Ontario’s information and privacy commission, which ordered the records be disclosed with certain information, including the victims’ personal details, removed.

“The facts underlying this incident clearly demonstrate that there is a compelling public interest in disclosing these records,” adjudicator Colin Bhattacharjee said in a Sept. 30 decision.

In ordering the police release the 65 pages of records, Bhattacharjee rejected the Toronto police assertion that the assault happened in a private residence and the investigation records are “of no interest to the public.”

“In ordinary circumstances, there would likely not be a public interest, let alone a compelling public interest in disclosing police records relating to a home invasion or an assault,” Bhattacharjee wrote.

“However, the circumstances connected to this particular assault are not ordinary, nor is the house where it occurred.”

Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray said the force is reviewing the adjudicator’s decision and considering “all of our options.”

She refused to say why 18 officers investigated the attack, noting that police “will not discuss investigative tactics or the details of resources involved for any particular investigation.”

The use of 18 officers on a home assault is another example of the extraordinary efforts the Toronto police force has put into its investigation of events surrounding the crack video. Toronto’s top homicide investigator was tapped to lead the probe, which has included an airplane and teams of officers in vehicles running surveillance.

In his decision, Bhattacharjee noted that police included an excerpt of the police report in its “information to obtain” a search warrant for its investigation into Ford and Alexander Lisi, the mayor’s friend, occasional driver and suspected drug dealer.

The inclusion of the report suggests “the home invasion and assault was seen by the police to possibly have some connection to their broader investigation that included the activities of Mayor Ford and his close friend.”

Around 11 p.m. on May 21, 2013, a man knocked on the door of the Windsor Rd. bungalow and asked for Fabio Basso, a high school friend of Ford’s, the police report said.

The suspect pushed his way past Basso’s elderly mother and made a beeline to a bedroom where Basso and his girlfriend were lying down. There, he “started beating the two victims over the head and body with a steel pipe,” the police report said.

The suspect, described as black and muscular, “did not demand anything from the victims,” according to police. No one has been charged.

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Bhattacharjee said the police reports and officers’ notes do not appear to contain any direct reference to Ford or Lisi.

The Windsor Rd. house has been a constant backdrop in the ongoing saga of Ford and his association with gang members, some of whom were later arrested for gun and drug offences.

In a now infamous image, Ford was photographed in the driveway of the house with three alleged gang members, including one who was later murdered in a shooting outside a Toronto nightclub. The two other men were charged in the Project Traveller guns-and-gangs raids in June 2013.

The bungalow is a “crack house” where Dixon Rd.-area gang members often go to chop drugs or hang out and get drunk, according to search warrant documents. None of the allegations in the documents have been proven in court.

One of those alleged gang members, Mohamed Siad, filmed Ford smoking from a crack pipe in the Windsor Rd. home and then tried to sell the video for at least $100,000.

In the hours and days following the Star and Gawker stories, police wiretap records describe alleged gang members discussing how Ford wanted to retrieve the video and had allegedly offered $5,000 and a car for it.

At one point, the Star found, Lisi even visited Fabio Basso as part of his attempts to recover the video.

In wiretapped conversations, Fabio’s sister, Elena Johnson, discussed what she called the stupidity of Siad in making the video in her home.

“He’s the f---ing mayor of Toronto,” Johnson said. “We’re going to feel the heat everywhere.”

Last Wednesday, a Ford campaign sign was staked in the lawn at 15 Windsor Rd. Mayoral candidate Doug Ford (open Doug Ford's policard) told reporters he has no affiliation with the Bassos.

“I don’t even know who lives in there,” he said. “I had no affiliation with that house. That’s Rob Ford, not Doug Ford. I know you want to try to twist it into Doug Ford, but that’s not the case.”