Missoula Crime Report: Attorney Thankful for Another Slow Week

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 15 new felony complaints this week, which is two less than last week and right around the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, eight were violent crimes.

“Three of those were family violence, two were non-family violence,” Jennings said. “We did have three sexual assaults and that is a little bit high for a weekly number. We had three endangerment crimes, pretty much all of those involved driving behavior. We had four drug crimes. We still continue to deal with fentanyl in our community and are making sure that people aren't committing other crimes off of their drug use.”

Jennings said those numbers are down a little bit from some averages that we have had most of the summer.

“I think that is a really good thing,” Jennings said. “We are always looking for trends and I am usually left scratching my head about what makes one week kind of busy and the next week slow. We're hoping that after this Labor Day weekend, folks are safe, having a really great time with their families, and not ending up in our world.”

With many University of Montana students returning to campus this week, Jennings was asked if that might impact crime numbers moving forward.

“There doesn’t seem to be a specific significance to school starting, “ Jennings said. “It's just such a pleasure to live in a university town and even with 10,000 folks starting school and probably a lot of those people not being here in the summer, we really don't see a rise in crime. A lot of those kids are law-abiding. They're trying to get an education. Yeah, they might get involved in some activities like drinking or making some mistakes, but they usually aren't that significant.”

READ MORE: Missoula News – Crime Reports

Jennings added that the University Police does a good job of ensuring students are safe.

“They deal with low-level offenses at the misdemeanor level or even through administrative processes at the University,” said Jennings. “Occasionally, we do see some more serious crimes like those of sexual violence. We really prioritize and make sure that we take those seriously. But I don't necessarily see a rise with school starting versus just the behavior of young people, usually combined with alcohol.”

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’s full report below: