The Aug. 26 phone call to the Springfield police related to Haitian goose hunting at a local park was one of two incidents recorded by Ohio authorities, according to the state Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).
On Friday, the state agency released a statement to local media that another caller reported a group of Haitians grabbing wildlife from a Clark County park and stuffing the animals in a trash bag.
“The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife has a dedicated wildlife officer assigned to Clark County who routinely monitors Snyder Park in Springfield because it is a popular fishing area,” the statement read. “That Wildlife Officer received calls on two separate occasions from people who reported witnessing individuals of Haitian descent taking waterfowl out of Snyder Park.”
“Upon follow-up, no supporting evidence was found of wildlife being illegally removed from the park in either case,” the agency added, though the drivers in both cases apparently fled the scene. “The first incident was reported on March 27, and the caller claimed they saw three people grab a live duck and goose, place them in a trash bag, and drive away.”
The caller said the animals reportedly kidnapped in March appeared to be a Canadian goose and a mallard, according to an investigatory case report within the ODNR shared with The Federalist.
The Federalist published audio of the call to police from the incident in August last week.
“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller told the public services dispatcher in the audio recording. “I’m time crunching here, and I saw that, I’m like, ‘Yeah this has got to be reported.'”
State and national media have used the ODNR’s claim that “no supporting evidence was found” to dismiss the charges of Haitian goose hunting. On Sunday, the left-wing fact-checking organization PolitiFact sought to undermine The Federalist’s reporting with remarks from the state agency, as if the two calls placed before Springfield became emblematic of the nation’s immigration crisis were not evidence themselves.
The New York Times also wrote off the allegations of immigrant goose hunting last week as discriminatory claiming such charges have “deep roots in racist stereotypes, which depict foreigners as willing consumers of a variety of undesirable animals.”
The roughly 60,000 residents of Springfield are meanwhile overwhelmed by the surge of more than 20,000 Haitian migrants to the depressed Rust Belt community. Car accidents are reportedly up while taxpayer resources are stretched thin to offer social services such as interpreters in schools and clinics.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue refused to offer The Federalist an interview but told PBS last week “Springfield is a close community and has a big heart.”
“But at the same point,” he said, “we’ve had this influx that has taxed all these services,” including “the infrastructure of the city, our safety forces, our hospitals, [and] our schools.”
