Missoula Crime Report: Violent Crimes Rise as Courts Face Pressure

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 25 new felony complaints this week, which is 14 more than last week and much higher than the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, there were seven violent crimes. 

“We had a couple of assaults with a weapon, an assault on a peace officer, and a few other things of that nature,” Jennings said. “We had three instances of domestic violence that reached a felony level. We had three non-family violence incidents and one sexual assault case. We had four property crimes, which isn't too bad, and then six drug crimes. That is quite a bit. We've not had as many of those in recent weeks. We had two administrative crimes, which were fugitives from out of state that got picked up here.” 

Jennings said the numbers were higher this week because they processed a good amount of out-of-custody cases. 

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“We get a category of cases that are in custody,” Jennings said. “An incident happens, and people are put in handcuffs and taken to jail. We have to charge those within 48 hours. There are also investigations that take sometimes weeks, months, and occasionally years. Those get referred to as out of custody. This week, we were able to catch up on a few of those, and we charged 8 out of custody cases.” 

Jennings mentioned that they also have two jury trials going on right now. 

“It is rare that we do two District Court jury trials at the same time,” Jennings said. “It really stresses the limits of the system of being able to manage jurors, court staff, bailiffs, judges, and attorneys, both for us and defense attorneys. But we have two that have been going on almost all week, and one of them is going to go into next week. That's a pretty large and serious sex trafficking case that has a few more days left on it.” 

Jennings looks forward to providing feedback on that trial next week. 

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports

“We had another very serious case that's still under deliberations today involving the beating death of a dog that led to some other allegations of sexual intercourse without consent in a domestic violence situation,” Jennings said. “Our attorneys are working really hard to make sure they bring justice to those victims. I'll let you know next week how they went.” 

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: