Inukjuak mayor warns prank calls to police could lead to someone getting hurt

Inukjuak Mayor Bobby Epoo is sounding the alarm over what he says are prank callers making false reports of active gunmen in the community.

“For the past several days, the Nunavik Police Service has been receiving a distressing number of prank calls reporting active gunman threats, including threats to harm or kill individuals within our community,” Epoo said in a written statement issued Wednesday.

“I decided to issue that public statement encouraging people to put a stop to this nonsense; it is very, very, very concerning. Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt,” Epoo said in an interview.

He said he’s worried one of the prank calls could lead to someone getting hurt or killed.

Since last Thursday, there have been three or four calls with the most recent on Monday, he told Nunatsiaq News.

Last Thursday, Nunavik Police Service officers shot and killed a person in the village.

Officers were responding to a report of a person being held against their will. When they arrived, the person allegedly approached officers with a “bladed weapon,” a news release from Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, Quebec’s police watchdog, said.

Police opened fire and killed the person.

The shooting is under investigation by the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, which looks into cases where a member of the public is killed or seriously injured during contact with police.

Since the shooting, the community has been on edge. It was the third time police officers in Nunavik have fatally shot a civilian since last November.

“[The shooting] is a very serious situation that they dealt with and they are not taking it lightly. After any incident like that, they always become extra-cautious,” Epoo said.

The prank calls exacerbate the already tense situation, he said.

Epoo said he has asked the Nunavik Police Service and the emergency call centre in Montreal for transcripts and help in determining who made the false calls.

Determining who is making the calls is difficult because the callers use tools to create untraceable phone numbers.

The mayor is also in the process of making a formal request to the community’s main internet service provider, Tamaani Internet, for help to identify the callers.

Attitudes toward police officers in the North are different than in the south, and officers need more cultural training to understand that in order to avoid a misunderstanding leading to a death, Epoo said.

“We are already in a state of shock with the shooting,” he said, adding he doesn’t want this to happen again.

“One is already too much.”

A Nunavik Police Service spokesperson could not be reached for comment about what the mayor said were prank calls.