A complaint about broadcaster Ezra Levant’s rant that likened Gypsies to “swindlers” has prompted a Toronto police investigation.

Toronto’s Roma Community Centre, which has called the rant “overtly racist, prejudicial, and demeaning,” lodged the complaint with police on Oct. 11.

Const. Wendy Drummond confirmed Toronto police had received the complaint and were investigating the comments aired on Levant’s Sun News show, The Source, on Sept. 5.

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An Oct. 15 statement from Roma Community Centre executive director Gina Csányi-Robah described Levant’s comments as “nearly nine minutes of on-air racist hate-speech targeting our community.”

Early in Levant’s segment, “The Jew vs. the Gypsies,” he likened Gypsies with “swindlers,” and said “too many have come here as false refugees.”

Levant attempted to qualify his comments by saying politically correct terms are being used to obscure the truth.

Csányi-Robah said called the comments “one of the longest and most sustained on-air broadcasts of hate-speech against any community in Canada that we’ve witnessed since our organization was established in 1997.”