A man walks past a sign on the outside of a strip club making light of the jaywalking ticket Toronto Mayor Rob Ford received during a visit to the Vancouver area, in Vancouver, B.C., on Tuesday February 4, 2014.
Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
February 06, 2014 - 4:58 AM
TORONTO - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he's "perplexed" over receiving a ticket for jaywalking last Friday in a Vancouver suburb.
Ford was in B.C. to attend the funeral of a friend's mother and was crossing a road linking the Vancouver-area municipalities of Burnaby and Coquitlam when police stopped him.
Commenting for the first time since getting the ticket, Ford said Wednesday that there were 15 people with him at the time but the officer picked him out and said "you're Rob Ford, come with me."
Ford says he and another person he was with were given jaywalking tickets for $109.
He says he understands the RCMP have a job to do and admits he's broken the law "many times" by jaywalking, but says in Toronto he's seen very few officers give jaywalking tickets.
The RCMP, which is responsible for policing Coquitlam, has refused to comment on the reasons Ford received the ticket or how many tickets are issued for jaywalking.
"I'm just perplexed by it," Ford said, noting that "everybody jaywalks."
"When I was like five years old you run across the street ... when there's an ice cream store across the street and I'm a little tyke, I scoot across the street," he said.
But the ticket would seem to be the least of Ford's ongoing troubles.
Earlier last week an ex-boyfriend of Ford's sister filed a lawsuit claiming the mayor conspired to have him attacked in jail to prevent his illicit behaviours from becoming publicly known.
Scott MacIntyre alleges in his statement of claim that Ford arranged for jail staff to facilitate the beating.
None of MacIntyre's allegations have been proven in court, and Ford's lawyer, Dennis Morris, says "They're without fact or foundation."
The mayor has admitted to consuming too much alcohol on occasion, as well as smoking crack cocaine, likely in a "drunken stupor," and to smoking marijuana.
News from © The Canadian Press, 2014