(CNN) – Deputy Scott Cultice of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said this week that he and another county employee “went through about 11 months of calls” to dispatch trying to track down “some of those rumors that are going around.”
Springfield is within Clark County, Ohio, and the county Sheriff’s Office dispatches calls in both Springfield and the county, according to an official.
“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 that four Haitians were seen with geese.”
CNN obtained records from that report, which show officers were sent to follow up on the call. The conditions of the geese were not mentioned in the report.
Either way, there was “no way to follow up. So it was pretty much unfounded and it was turned over to the (Ohio Department of Natural Resources, ODNR),” 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 that August call never materialized.
As part of a statement to CNN, 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.
“Upon 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, “No videos have emerged, no photos have emerged, no dead geese have emerged. There is nothing to support this being happening. Could it happen? Maybe. But there is no evidence of any of that.”
Speaking with Cultice, another Clark County commissioner, Melanie Flax Wilt, said efforts to investigate calls were a “perfect example of resources being diverted by misinformation and rumors.”
“(You) spent 13 hours going through records to determine that a call had been made and an agent was literally sent out to look for wild geese and they got no real information,” he said.
However, those rumors and accusations on social media have raised concerns — and in some cases, resentment — about the growth of the city of Springfield and concerns about public resources amid the arrival of Haitian migrants.
Commissioner Rittenhouse told CNN this Friday that everything is related.
“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 the second consecutive day in Springfield this Friday “based on information received by the Springfield Police Division.”
“I’m sad for our community, I really am,” Commissioner Rittenhouse told CNN.
“We have to get through this,” Cultice said. “I’m originally from here, most people are. And we have a passion to improve this place. And right now, we are crestfallen. We are really crestfallen, 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 like we have no control except what we know is 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 focus on those problems,” he added.
