WHEN rumours of a video allegedly showing Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto (pictured), smoking crack first surfaced in May 2013, Mr Ford questioned its existence and denied he was a drug addict. As the months went by with no sign of the video, despite the offer of a $200,000 reward by the website that broke the story, gawker.com, it seemed the controversial mayor had won a reprieve. That ended October 31st when Bill Blair, the Toronto police chief, confirmed in a news conference that among the deleted files on a computer police had seized in a drug, guns and gangs raid was a video file “consistent with what has been described in the media”. The three big Toronto newspapers, the left-leaning Toronto Star, right-leaning Toronto Sun and centrist Globe and Mail, called for the mayor to step down immediately. Many former supporters on the city council distanced themselves from Mr Ford, who has run Toronto since late 2010. Yet in a brief appearance before the cameras after the news broke Mr Ford refused to go, saying “I have no reason to resign.”

As Mr Ford’s opponents have already discovered to their chagrin, there is no way to force a sitting mayor out of office unless he is convicted and jailed for a crime. He successfully fought a judicial order in December 2012 that he step down for violating conflict-of-interest laws. And he has outlived a number of other scandals by ignoring them. That has left Toronto divided between hardcore supporters of the mayor, collectively known as Ford Nation and based mostly in the suburbs from which he hails, and those who either find his continuing reign embarrassing or who disagree with his policies.

Yet although the police have laid no charges against the mayor in relation to the video—the police chief said there was not enough evidence—documents released on October 31st in a related investigation contain plenty of reasons why Torontonians might want their mayor to go. Mr Ford kept popping up during police surveillance of known and suspected drug traffickers in the northwestern Toronto suburb he calls home. (His friend and occasional driver was arrested and charged with drug trafficking as a result of that operation and was charged last month with extortion.) He posed for photographs outside a home which the police have identified as a crack house with three people, two of whom were later gunned down in a gang-related attack.

None of this is a crime, but it is conduct unbecoming the mayor of Toronto and is damaging to its reputation. Mr Blair probably understated the reaction of the city’s residents when he said after viewing the video he was “disappointed”. It is unclear whether the public will ever be able to see the video because it is evidence in an extortion case that may or may not go to trial.

There is an unlikely beneficiary to Mr Ford’s latest imbroglio: Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister of Canada and a one-time Ford ally. Since parliament returned on October 16th Mr Harper has been under sustained attack by the opposition parties about his involvement in an expense scandal in the Senate. It may be only temporary, but the media focus on the colourful Mr Ford has pushed the Senate scandal off the front page.