It’s all over Facebook. Eunice residents saying they often hear gunshots at night and asking their neighbors if they did too.

“Our crime rate is not really increasing in the city. What it is, is the awareness has increased because of social media,” Chief Randy Fontenot said.

Although the shots are reported, sometimes there’s not much they can do, the chief said. 

“If we don’t have a victim, and we don’t have a suspect, and we don’t have any evidence, there’s nothing that can be done except to patrol the area a little more and have more of a presence in those areas, which we do.”

And he said sometimes when victims are involved, they don’t cooperate with investigators. “We had a shooting recently where the victim said, ‘even if I knew who it was, I wouldn’t tell you and I wouldn’t want to do anything about it.’ They want their own justice,” Fontenot said. “They don’t want us to do it. They want to do it their own way.”

The chief says that although this may be the case, he hopes residents do not get discouraged from reporting the gunshots to police. He adds that anytime you make a report to the police station, give as much detail as possible.

That way, it better helps their invetigation.