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Two Montrealers say police officers may have encouraged citizens to practice racial profiling Tuesday as they handed flyers out in St. Henri.

Ossie Michelin says two officers came to his door Tuesday afternoon and asked him if he’d seen any “homeless aboriginals” in the area.

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Later in their conversation the officer repeated his statement about aboriginals, specifying that St. Henri residents should be on the lookout for Inuit, Michelin said.

“He said, ‘We’ve had several complaints last year about homeless Inuit people,'” said Michelin, a freelance journalist. “At that point I said, ‘Well, I’m aboriginal, I’m half Inuit, I’m from Labrador.’ And he kind of went, ‘Oh! Well, we’re just being proactive and warning people’.”

The officer handed Michelin a flyer outlining the local police station’s efforts to target “reprehensible behaviour” including: public drunkenness, street fighting, public urination and loitering. The fact that the police associated this type of behaviour with a particular ethnic group is troubling to Michelin.