() – Clark County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Cultice said this week that he and another county employee “reviewed about 11 months of calls” to dispatch trying to track down “some of those rumors that are circulating.”
Springfield is within Clark County, Ohio, and the county Sheriff’s Office dispatches calls in both Springfield and the county, according to an official.
On Tuesday, during the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for the presidency of the United States, the Republican candidate pointed out that immigrants living in Springfield eat dogs and cats.
“We review animal complaints, we review thefts,” Cultice said at a county meeting Wednesday, detailing that he and the employee spent about six and a half hours each reviewing records.
Over nearly a year of call logs, none involved cats, dogs or other common pets.
However, there was a call in August “from a man who reported seeing four Haitians with geese.”
obtained records from that report, which show that officers were dispatched to follow up on the call. The condition of the geese was not mentioned in the report.
In any case, there was no “way to follow up. So it was practically unfounded and handed over to the [Departamento de Recursos Naturales de Ohio, ODNR, por sus siglas en inglés]“Cultice said.
Clark County Commissioner Sasha Rittenhouse accompanied an ODNR agent last week, in part to understand whether claims of ducks and geese being stolen from parks were substantiated. It was on one of those visits that she learned that August call never materialized.
As part of a statement to , the ODNR said it received calls “on two separate occasions” this year from people who reported “seeing individuals of Haitian descent removing waterfowl from Snyder Park.” One was in March and the other was the aforementioned call in August.
“Following monitoring, no additional evidence was found of wildlife being illegally removed from the park,” the statement said.
The ODNR says it has a “dedicated wildlife agent assigned to Clark County who routinely monitors Snyder Park in Springfield because it is a popular fishing area.”
Commissioner Rittenhouse said, “There have been no videos, there have been no photos, there have been no dead geese. There is nothing to support that this is happening. Could it happen? Maybe. But there is no evidence of any of that.”
Speaking to Cultice, another Clark County commissioner, Melanie Flax Wilt, said the efforts to investigate calls were a “perfect example of how resources are diverted by misinformation and rumors.”
“[Ustedes] They spent 13 hours reviewing records to determine that a call had been made and an agent was literally sent out to chase wild geese and they got no real information,” he said.
But those rumors and accusations on social media have sparked concerns — and in some cases, resentment — about the city of Springfield’s growth and worries about public resources amid the influx of Haitian migrants.
Commissioner Rittenhouse told on Friday that it’s all connected.
“I don’t blame the debate on Tuesday night, this is an issue that was already underway,” he said. “There is a lot of passion, there is a lot of frustration.”
Schools were evacuated for a second consecutive day in Springfield on Friday “based on information received by the Springfield Police Division.”
“I’m sad for our community, I really am,” Commissioner Rittenhouse told .
“We have to get through this,” Cultice said. “I’m originally from here, most people are. And we have a passion for making this place better. And right now, we’re down in the dumps. We’re really down in the dumps, and I don’t know how to get up.”
“Some of these calls are going to start destroying our businesses, our image abroad, our tourism and that is where I feel we have no control except what we know to be the truth,” Cultice said.
“We are doing our best. We didn’t have a sign that said: empty, welcome. We have no control over that. But what we do have control over is what we provide to people, the reality of what the problems are, and how we approach those problems,” he added.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said false claims promoted by the Trump campaign that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are killing and eating family pets are “harming our citizens and our community.”
Asked what she would say to former President Donald Trump, Rue told ‘s Laura Coates: “We need help, not hate.”
“We have a beautiful city and we need the national stage to pay attention to what his words are doing in cities like ours, historic cities in Ohio… that are working hard to be important, and we are doing well. We don’t need this backlash that is hurting our citizens and our community,” Rue said.
The Springfield mayor also said it is “frustrating” that some of the rhetoric is coming from JD Vance, who is a Republican senator in the state.
On the other hand, Rue revealed that city officials, including himself, have received hateful phone calls and emails.
“Unfortunately, right now, we have to focus on making sure that this rhetoric is dispelled, that these rumors are simply not true. You know, Springfield is a beautiful place and your pets are safe in Springfield,” she added.
‘s Rashard Rose contributed to this report.
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