A Missoula Crime Wave? County Attorney Caseload Packed

Missoula County appears to be in the midst of a crime wave and County Attorney Kirsten Pabst says her office is processing an ever-growing number of cases.

“We took another snap-shot of where we are at just to get a sense of whether our case load is growing or diminishing, and in fact it’s the former,” Pabst said. “Just as of last night [Nov. 5], we’ve had 1,575 open, active cases in the office. We looked at the list around six weeks ago and we had around 1,300.”

Pabst says the cases are being processed at a normal speed, there are just too many to deal with.

“They are being processed as quickly as ever, we just have an influx of different types of cases,” Pabst said. “785 are criminal cases, we have 62 active juvenile delinquent cases, 59 mental health commitment cases. Our child abuse and neglect protective cases are at 348 right now, that is pretty high.”

Pabst says the county needs more attorneys to process all the cases and that there is a special need in the special Victims Unit. Right now they are looking for Grant money to help fill staffing needs.