As new allegations of immigrants eating pets arise in Ohio, the Dayton Police Department is getting ahead of the claims, saying there is no evidence it is happening in the town.
The police issued a statement hours after a video and article alleged African immigrants in Dayton were preparing to grill dead cats.
The claim was also shared by former President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
The new claim comes from conservative writer and activist Christopher Rufo, who published the claim in an article on Substack. The allegations come from a video first posted on social media in August 2023.
The video shows what appears to be animal carcasses on a grill, and a man filming alleges they are cats.
“What is this they got on the grill?” the man recording asks before turning the camera to two cats and saying, “Better get missing — looks like his homey’s on the grill!”
Rufo claims to have spoken to the man behind the camera, saying that he believes what was on the grill were cats.
However, the Dayton Police Department has come out denouncing the claims as “irresponsible.”
“We stand by our immigrant community, and there is no evidence to even remotely suggest that any group, including our immigrant community, is engaged in eating pets,” Dayton Police Chief Kamran Afzal said in the statement. “Seeing politicians or other individuals use outlandish information to appeal to their constituents is disheartening.”
The Dayton Mayor, Jeffery Mims Jr., also said that the claims were unfounded, saying it is “totally false and dangerously irresponsible.”
The new claim comes after Vance and Trump both claimed that Haitian immigrants were stealing pets in Springfield, Ohio, and eating them. Springfield is less than 30 miles from Dayton.
Despite the city’s officials saying that Trump and Vance’s claims are unfounded and have no evidence, Vance doubled down on Saturday in a post on X about the new claim in Dayton.
“Kamala Harris and her media apparatchiks should be ashamed of themselves,” Vance wrote. “Another ‘debunked’ story that turned out to have merit.”
Since the debate between Trump and Vice President Harris, there have been several bomb threats made against schools and hospitals in the Springfield area.
On Saturday, Springfield’s Wittenberg University announced it would take “extreme precautions” because of on-campus shooting threats it received via email that “targeted Haitian members of our community.”
The threats are being investigated by local law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.