Missoula Gang Violence: County Attorney Issues Zero-Tolerance Warning

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 15 new felony complaints this week, which is one less than last week and right around the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, there were eight violent crimes and that is the most they have had in about four or five months.  

“Recently we have had a disturbing trend here in Missoula where we've seen some juvenile gang violence popping up,” Jennings said. “Last weekend we had a gang-involved shooting and then a couple days ago we had another firearm-related incident involving rival gang members at a grocery store. The police force here in Missoula is really skilled, they're really ambitious, they have some great expertise, and they're tackling this problem on the front end to make sure that things don't get out of control.” 

Jennings issued a warning to some of these people who might be joining some of these gangs. 

“If we see someone who is involved in a gang or gang violence, there is going to be a 0 tolerance policy between our office prosecuting them and the Police Department making sure that they do apprehend them,” Jennings said. “We're going to use all the tools necessary to make sure the community is protected in those circumstances. I hope that with that cooperation, we can snuff this out before we see some of the problems in Billings or larger urban areas that people may associate with gangs a little bit more. But sadly this is a real problem here and it's something that we're going to be watching pretty closely.” 

Jennings said some juveniles are joining these gangs and they want to try to help them as much as possible. 

“While we take these extremely seriously, we do understand how some people can get on the wrong track,” Jennings said. “When we're finding young people engaged in that stuff, we're not giving up on them either. We're taking it seriously, but we're using our partners in youth court and youth probation to see if we can get some of these kids back into school, get guns out of their hands, get them off drugs, and get them on a healthy course in their life.” 

READ MORE: Missoula News – Crime Reports 

Jennings highlighted the fact that a lot of young men are struggling trying to figure out where they belong. 

“There are a lot of tools that we have in our toolbox,” Jennings said. “What we're learning right now, because we haven't had to deal with this in a couple of decades, is the best way to deal with these people under their circumstances and to protect the community, is dealing with the most violent offenders harshly and dealing with the lighter offenders in a way that we can try and rehabilitate them and get them on the right track.” 

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: