TORONTO

Councillor Doug Ford says his family’s Etobicoke homestead has been under surveillance by Toronto Police officers in an aircraft.

“Oh yeah,” Ford said over the phone from Austin, Texas, where he is with his brother Mayor Rob Ford and other councillors to study the southern city’s incredible music scene. “It was really loud and flying right over. My mom (Diane) called me and said there is a plane buzzing the house.”

Doug Ford said he went over and confirmed it.

He describes something out of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic Goodfellas where the character played by Ray Liotta kept noticing a helicopter above him.

Or maybe the Cary Grant character battling an a prop plane in Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary 1959 film North by Northwest would be a better description since in this case it was a Cessna.

“It was circling around and around,” said the Ward 2, Etobicoke North councillor about the mid-August incident. “The plane was coming down so low I thought they were going to land in the pool.”

Angry at the danger of it, Ford said, “I stood there and gave them the finger.”

It didn’t make them go away.

“They were there for five straight days,” said Ford. “It was ridiculous.”

Not knowing if it was prying media or otherwise, Ford said he called two superintendents he knows who confirmed it was police over the backyard famous for hosting many Ford Fest barbecues.

“I asked them what they were doing but they just said it was something else,” said Ford. ”They said it was a bust they were making at the airport.”

He wasn’t buying it.

“You know when a plane is surveilling you,” he said. “I told them to come and check out any of our houses any time and just come in the front door.”

The question was asked following a story in the Toronto Star Friday that said “the unusual step of air surveillance, using a Cessna contracted to the Toronto Police, was employed to follow Ford and other people in Etobicoke.”

Toronto Police would not confirm or deny it.

“We do not discuss investigative techniques,” said spokesman Mark Pugash.

But what does this mean?

Why would police be following Toronto’s mayor?

They would not answer the question Friday.

Doug Ford said the rented Cessna was more about harassment and intimidation by “some elitist people in Toronto” trying to obtain the reins of power than it ever was an “investigative technique.”

He said he “knows they are listening” to Ford family phone calls, too.

Instead of worrying about it all, he said, they are just focusing on work.

“Rob is fine,” said Doug. “It doesn’t bother him. He has rhinoceros skin.”

And the mayor, who did not address questions from reporters on this topic in Austin, was not at all fazed about police following him, said Doug.

Although he didn’t specify it was from above, the mayor said on Aug. 15 — the same day the plane buzzed the Fords’ home — that he was routinely being followed.

“Rob knew (of the airplane) and just laughed,” said Doug. “He said they can follow me all day and night long because I am not doing anything wrong.”

Interesting, however, this week Mayor Ford’s friend Sandro Lisi was busted on charges related to marijuana and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

But Doug, who himself denied a story in the Globe and Mail in the summer that suggested he was a hashish dealer when he was a teen, said the efforts to tie his brother into drugs or other things is nothing more than “a witch hunt” and “politically motivated.”

However an objective person must ask what is this really all about.

Why would police be going to this effort, risk, expanse and expense to watch the movements of the mayor?

So far, they are not telling.

But if Toronto Police are going to these lengths to keep an eye on the mayor and associates, to avoid all obvious conflicts perhaps an outside police service should be asked to handle it.

Even though police will not confirm or elaborate, Doug Ford said it’s not right.

Pugash did not respond to further questions on assertions it was a police aircraft.

But Doug Ford says it will be difficult to convince him otherwise.