Missoula Crime Report: ‘Quietest Week in Years’

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 10 new felony complaints this week, which is six less than last week and significantly lower than the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, that’s the quietest week they have had in years. 

“We would love to think that little blips like this are some sort of trend, criminals are getting the point, or we're doing a great job, but honestly, I think it's just a cold snap,” Jennings said. “Sometimes people don't want to go outside. We see that periodically.” 

Jennings said they see spikes in crime sometimes when it's really hot outside.  

“Not everybody has air conditioning and I think sometimes folks are getting irritated and they end up going outside in late June, July, or August. We actually see little increases in things like domestic violence. But it is nice to have a little bit of a reprieve this week and we even had one day where there were no felony arrests.” 

Jennings said that was pretty common before COVID, but they almost never see that anymore. 

“Within our ten, we had four violent crimes,” Jennings said. “That's also a little bit lower than we've been running lately. We had three property crimes, two drug crimes, and one administrative crime which was a fugitive warrant. Within our violent crimes, we had two partner or family member assaults, we had one non-family violence, and we did have one sexual assault case that was charged this week.” 

Jennings added that they have been focusing a lot of their attention on the current Legislative Session. 

“Our office, along with the County Attorneys Association, has been requesting some revisions to DUI laws to increase enforcement and also some revisions to endangering the welfare of children to better protect kids from exposure to drugs,” Jennings said. “We've been monitoring some other things to make sure that we're being cooperative partners with people all over the state and state agencies to always improve criminal justice, law enforcement mental health, and areas like that to better serve our community.” 

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office provides a weekly crime report every Friday morning at 9:00 on Talk Back. You can listen to Jennings’ full report below: