Missoula County Attorney Addresses Increase in Firearm Incidents

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

“We always track those and pour the most resources into them,” Jennings said. “We had one endangerment crime. We had no property crimes this week. That doesn't mean that they didn't occur, it just means that we didn't charge them. Sometimes they take follow-up and can take a little bit of time because they're not always in custody. We had three drug crimes and then two administrative crimes. These are usually fugitive from justice cases where somebody has a warrant from out of state and they get picked up in our lovely community.”

One of the cases Jennings wanted to highlight was the shooting that occurred early Sunday night.

“We live in a wonderful community and it is pretty safe, but we have seen an uptick of some firearm-related incidents downtown,” Jennings said. “You may remember a couple of years ago the legislature changed the law. For 120 years you weren't allowed to have firearms at a bar in Montana, but you are now. They're getting into a disagreement, a fight, or an altercation when alcohol is involved. We're seeing incidents like that on a somewhat regular basis.”

Jennings said that doesn’t mean that Missoula is any more dangerous than it used to be.

“We are seeing this as somewhat of a trend,” Jennings said. “People are thinking it's OK to combine alcohol and firearms in a late-night downtown situation. That's really unfortunate. Someone did get shot, but they are alive. We're going to make sure we can do everything we can in a case like that because we take firearm incidents extremely seriously.”

Jennings added that the Cole Levine trial is starting on Monday.

“He is alleged to have committed an attempted sexual intercourse without consent,” Jennings said. “I don't want to get too far into the details because we don't want to influence any potential jurors that might be listening. But we have a really great team of prosecutors on that case and we look forward to presenting that evidence to jurors next week and hopefully, we can find justice for that victim.”

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: