BOZEMAN — Dozens of people around town have taken to social media to ask whether they've been hearing gunshots. Law enforcement, on the other hand, says that might not always be the case.
“It's pretty concerning in, you know, neighborhoods and kind of various times of night when they hear what sounds like gunshots,” says Gallatin County Undersheriff Jeremy Kopp.
On Sunday night, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office received about half a dozen calls of people hearing gunshots around South 19th Avenue.
“A string of calls that were kind of in rapid succession that were linked to one specific vehicle and that those were backfiring,” says Kopp.
Kopp says the driver from Sunday’s incident is cooperating with law enforcement to change the modifications to the vehicle responsible for the gunshot sounds. This time around no laws were broken, but that doesn’t mean drivers won’t get citations. Another incident earlier in the week near Gallatin High School is still being investigated.
“There are codes that you can be cited for if you're intentionally tuning your vehicle to make it backfire,” says Kopp.
Kopp says residents did the right thing by calling 911.
“If somebody reports gunshots, we're going to respond assuming that there is gunshots happening somewhere out. When you call and report something, we will come. We'll investigate it,” says Kopp.
