Missoula Crime Report: Violence is Down But Drugs are Up

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 18 new felony complaints this week, which is five more than last week and around the weekly average. County Attorney Matt Jennings provided the report.   

“Only 30% of those were violent crimes,” Jennings said. “We've been running about 50% for the last couple of years. We had six violent crimes, four endangering crimes, pretty much all involving driving, and only one property crime, which is good news. We did have five drug crimes. That isn't necessarily an anomaly over the last decade or so, but we haven’t had as many arrests related to drug crimes, and this week we had quite a few.” 

Over the past few years, Jennings said they’ve seen this skyrocketing use of fentanyl, and it seemed like, at least anecdotally, they weren't seeing as much methamphetamine come through their office, but this week, all of those drug crimes were methamphetamine related. 

“We had two administrative crimes, and those are those are just fugitives,” Jennings said. “Usually, those are just folks that are here, and they had a warrant out, so nothing to be alarmed about. The six violent crimes this week were broken down as follows: three of them were family violence or domestic violence, one of those included the strangulation, we had two non-family violence incidents, and one sex crime.” 

Jennings also mentioned that they have a few homicide trials coming up soon. 

“We have had three District Court jury trials in three weeks,” Jennings said. “All of those resulted in convictions, and they all involved the same prosecutor, who is just an absolute workhorse. Then we had a justice of the peace trial last week as well.” 

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports

Before COVID, Jennings said they were averaging high teens for the number of jury trials every year. 

“I think we rounded out about 30 last year,” Jennings said. “That may not seem like a huge difference, but going to a trial is sort of like our Super Bowl. It's a lot of work, a lot of preparation, a lot of people involved, and a lot of cost. But we're getting good results. We're getting good feedback from jurors, whether or not we win or not. The system is working as it should. We give everybody the rights that they deserve, and we try and prove their cases. I'm just really happy of the justice system that we continue to cultivate here in Missoula County.” 

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: