A Vancouver man filed a report with police claiming he was the victim of a racial tirade.
Julio Montero says he was coming out of a London Drugs Sunday night when he was approached by a Caucasian man in his 40s.
“As I’m walking, I see a man approaching me and he quickly does a Nazi salute and says, ‘Donald Trump Power! Now the power’s on our side,'” Montero said.
“I was initially in disbelief but then I stood up and I said to myself, ‘What the hell did I just see?'”
Montero, who was born and raised in Cuba, reported the incident to London Drugs and the Vancouver Police Department.
The racial rant is believed to have been caught on surveillance camera. Montero reported the incident to the store manager and the Vancouver Police Department.
The accusation comes after reports of similar incidents across North America.
Recently, a video by the Atlantic that was taken inside a meeting of the National Policy Institute — a think-tank that is part of the alt-right movement that includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites — showed the group’s leader shouting to a crowd of about 200 people: “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” as some attendees lifted their hands in a Nazi salute.
Trump condemned the National Policy Institute in an interview with New York Times editors on Tuesday.
In Canada, a racist altercation was filmed on a Toronto streetcar with one passenger telling another to “Go back to your f—ing country.”
In B.C, racist flyers showed up in the mailboxes of some Richmond residents last week. RCMP are investigating the flyers as a form of hate literature.
Similar posters were found in Toronto recently.
“A lot of people are feeling emboldened by the recent events in the United States and they’re coming out and they are really expressing their racist views, supremacist views and all kinds of views that are completely unacceptable for our Canadian society,” Montero said.
Vancouver Police told Global News they launched an investigation immediately but the file is now closed because there was no physical violence, direct threats or any other criminal offence.
Police said Montero did the right thing and they are encouraging people to report this type of behaviour.
– With files from Rumina Daya, Jill Slattery, and The Associated Press
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