Missoula Crime Report: Record High Violent Crimes This Week

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 24 new felony complaints this week, which is four less than last week’s record amount but still way above the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, we had our highest violent crime rate in a long time. 

“We had 14 violent crimes against other persons,” Jennings said. “A lot of this was domestic violence. My theory is folks are getting really hot and the smoke and stuff is making people irritable. Usually, there's a little bit of alcohol and people are snapping but that's not OK to hurt a loved one or family member. We do prosecute those just to make sure everybody is safe and to hold people accountable for their actions.” 

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There was a significant number of violent crimes last week as well. Jennings said his office will continue to track this alarming trend. 

“We had four endangerment crimes,” Jennings said. “Those were pretty much all DUIs. These are felony DUI's. I'm not reporting each week on misdemeanors. We're only tracking these felonies and as a reminder, that's four or more. We are seeing more and more people that have 5, 6, 7, or 8 DUIs and we take these seriously because they're the most dangerous drivers on the road.” 

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In addition, there were three property crimes this week. Two of those involved a stolen vehicle and the other was a robbery. 

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“We had one drug crime and two administrative crimes,” Jennings said. “This week the administrative crimes were fugitives from justice, meaning they had warrants out from other states. We have to file fugitive charges on them to keep them in bail and then get them back to wherever they are wanted from.” 

Jennings said every complaint that they filed with week was an in-custody. 

“Those were arrests,” Jennings said. “Those were folks sitting in jail, really emergency situations. Usually, we have a little bit more of a mix of in-custody and out-of-custody cases. The out-of-custody might be say somebody has their garage broken into and stuff stolen and a detective gets assigned. It takes a few weeks to get a suspect and they send us a case. That would be considered an out-of-custody case.” 

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: