Zoom Chron Blog

A recent article from the Montana Free Press explains how people on the Blackfeet reservation are learning to search for their own missing community members because the authorities in this part of Montana just aren’t good enough, apparently:

Law enforcement in rural and tribal areas is often understaffed, underresourced and tangled in a complex web of legal jurisdictions, sometimes leading to frustrations with the professionalism and pace of searches for missing persons. So when loved ones and community members go missing, Indigenous families and friends often conduct their own searches.

“We shouldn’t have to start an organization for this,” Omeasoo told us on the first day of class. She said she founded Ohkomi Forensics, in part, because her high school classmate Ashley Loring Heavyrunner went missing in 2017. Almost a decade later, Loring Heavyrunner has not been found.

“These cases should have been handled by law enforcement and the people that are supposed to be protecting us and serving us,” Omeasoo told us. “But we still have to keep fighting for justice for all of them, and so we’ll all just keep fighting and keep searching.”

When do local authorities accept help from outside community members? When they aren’t trying to keep things secret from the public, that’s when. At least that’s what I took from Guy Baker’s contribution to this MFP article, which gives, I will note, his new investigation and consulting business some free advertising:

A few days after finishing Omeasoo’s class, I called Guy Baker. He retired from the Missoula Police Department in 2025 after 35 years of service and recently launched his own company, IV0VI (406 in Roman numerals) Investigations & Consulting. Baker has participated in dozens of searches for Jermain Charlo, who went missing from Missoula County in 2018, and said that while community searchers have good intentions, “their lack of knowledge and criminal procedure can sometimes complicate the situation.”

“They could’ve found something, and we say, ‘OK, where did you find this?’” he explained. “But if they didn’t drop a pin and can’t find that location again, it’s not much help to us.”

While searches that combine community manpower with law enforcement resources are ideal, Baker said, they aren’t always possible. Sometimes law enforcement needs to keep a scene to itself to keep sensitive information or leads confidential. And sometimes, he said, community members conduct searches when law enforcement doesn’t have the staff or resources to do so.

Was the disappearance of Leo Wagner one those cases that local law enforcement was just too “under resourced” to respond properly to after family search efforts found a cabin scene with blood and clothing items Leo was wearing when he disappeared?

According to a CBS story examining this case, there were resources deployed by authorities in the search for Leo Wagner, but he remains missing to this day.

In the following days, the family was able to piece together some of what happened after Leo left the house after talking to members of the community. He apparently made a few stops at houses around town before driving to a gathering near Lower St. Mary Lake in St. Mary. The area is about 30 minutes from Browning.

Nicole says she, her brother Billy and other family members searched that area in early May and discovered a cabin in disarray. “We see all the blood in the window. We see all the blood on the cabin, and then my dad and Billy find the sock and a shoe he was wearing,” she recalled. Nicole told “Dateline” she isn’t sure what happened in that cabin but believes Leo may have met with foul play.

After exhaustive searches of the area failed to turn anything up, the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office came in with some toys to play with. Despite these toys, Leo Wagner has never been found.

In June 2021, the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office was brought in to assist with the search for Leo at the lake using its brand-new side-scan sonar. The sheriff’s office posted on Facebook that “although side scan sonar is never a guarantee, it significantly increases the odds of locating drowning victims.” The search did not locate Leo.

In early August 2021, NBC Montana reported that BLES announced that St. Mary Lake would be closed for nine days while it performed searches for Leo. Those searches also came up empty.

Nicole says that in the years following Leo’s disappearance, communication with law enforcement has been challenging. She says the family has yet to receive an official update from BLES. “We never hear nothing back when we report something,” she said. “Like, they don’t call us, they don’t text us or nothing.”

Another unsolved missing person case involving the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office from 2021–the disappearance of 3 year old Arden Pepion–provides a little context to the supposed “jurisdiction” problem conveniently referenced by authorities when they fail to do their job and locate a missing persons:

The lead agency in the search for Pepion is the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, but other law enforcement agencies have been assisting, including the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office.

Detective Justin Kambic of the Sheriff’s Office is working with Burd and other volunteers to facilitate the search taking place next week, with Sheriff Jesse Slaughter commending Kambic on his passion and leadership.

Slaughter said increased collaboration with tribes in the region, especially before a tragedy happens, has helped tremendously in finding missing people.

The lack of coordination among agencies has been a major roadblock in search efforts across the state. Burd said she hopes different jurisdictions will collaborate more in future cases and is encouraged by some of the grants being made available towards such an effort.

What I think this excerpt exposes is the best, most reliable excuse used over and over again by law enforcement to explain away their failures: they simply don’t have enough money to do their jobs properly.

When local authorities are FORCED to respond EN MASSE to a threat, though, the question of money is saved for later, like the 8 day manhunt for Michael Paul Brown after he shot and killed 4 people at The Owl Bar, in Anaconda.

After every possible jurisdiction in the entire region (38 in total) responded to search for ONE man who left the scene of the crime in his skivvies, Montana’s Governor, Greg Gianforte, had to swoop in after Brown was finally found in order to help fund the massive response. Then authorities attempted to HIDE EVERYTHING about the case by having the entirety of the case sealed.

Hmmm.

In the months after the shooting, local officials grappled with covering the costs of the manhunt and were exploring the possibility of laying off four police officers for nine months or increasing taxes by over 20 millage. However, Montana governor Greg Gianforte reached out to Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Chief Executive Bill Everett by phone and offered state funds to cover $450,000 in costs sustained by local law enforcement during the manhunt. In a city-county meeting in November 2025, it was decided to levy two millage onto taxpayers to help cover the costs of the manhunt.

In January 2026, a coalition of media organizations submitted a motion to access court records related to the killings, arguing that an order by the district judge, Jeffrey Dahood, to seal all legal documents in the court case following a request by Anaconda-Deer Lodge county attorney Morgan Smith was in violation of state law and “fails to balance the public and Press’s constitutional right to examine public documents”. Dahood denied the motion, writing that the press had not “established why the court should allow them into this pending criminal case”. An editor of the Daily Montanan wrote in response to Dahood’s decision that sealing entire criminal cases would set a “dangerous precedent” and that it was the “public’s right to observe that helps ensure that justice is carried out without the appearance of something clandestine or prejudicial”.

If hiding failures and crowd-sourcing solutions is the path forward, then I hope the “movement” emerging to help address this issue for Native Americans can settle on an acronym so the virtue-signaling whites with money know who the priority will be.

Is the priority just women, or should a “G” for “girls” be added? And what about “two-spirit” people? And why is the little known fact about men and boys who go missing not a bigger part of this conversation?

To help investigative journalists use the correct acronyms, and care about the right kind of missing human, this Global Investigative Journalism Network article is a great tool (please note I’m being sarcastic here):

Reporters have delved into cold cases, documented the disproportionate numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous persons, and identified underlying causes.

This GIJN/NAJA guide provides examples of good journalistic work done in this area, suggests new avenues to explore, and provides tools and techniques that are useful in covering this issue.

In North America, this topic often goes by the acronym MMIW (murdered and missing Indigenous women) and sometimes MMIWG, with “girls” added. (On Twitter, the hashtags used are #MMIW and #MMIWG.) Largely unknown is the fact that men and boys go missing in greater numbers.

Isn’t it curious that this “largely unknown fact” about missing men and boys hardly ever makes into the larger conversation about missing Native people? Maybe Guy Baker can make this “largely unknown fact” one of his talking points as he appears on podcasts, woos Native women, like Nora and Connie, and gets the Montana “Free” Press to give his new business free advertising

Connie Walker, the Cree journalist who platformed Guy Baker’s failure to find Jermain Charlo for a national audience, discusses “crime-solving” in the Global Investigative Journalism Network article, and what she says is a good enough answer to explain public ignorance regarding missing men and boys than anything I could say:

Yes, being respectful is very important, and being respectful is probably something I was lacking in March of 2024 when I attended a MMIW/MMIWG fundraising event at the Butterfly House in Missoula. Perhaps my lack of respect has something to do with Lowell Hochhalter, the Chaplain of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, and his curious disinterest in missing persons cases like Rebekah Barsotti’s and Joey Thompson’s.

I know! Maybe, if the public gives ME enough money through donations to my new GoFundMe page, I can afford to take etiquette classes to help address my disrespect problem! I mean, it couldn’t hurt, right?

Thanks for reading!

Did you know five years ago Dr. Anthony Fauci had coloring books and children’s books made about him? Yes, it’s true, but if you don’t believe me, here’s part of a book review from that time period explaining to terrified Americans that our heroes would now be the nerds in lab coats who declared their fealty to the new, cult-like religion called TRUST THE SCIENCE!

Over the past year, that expression has taken a more somber meaning than its usual, ironic use in meme form. Essential workers such as frontline retailer employees that are keeping us fed and medical staff literally fighting the pandemic have become the champions most of us now truly admire, while the fictional ones have ironically been sidelined by COVID due to cinemas closing for the better part of 2020. The real superheroes now wear lab coats, scrubs, and whatever Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is available. For once, humanity is looking towards the nerds to save us, one of those being Dr. Anthony Fauci, the current Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States and a literal Mr. Wolf when it comes to immunology and pandemics.

Closer to home, in Montana, a fat fuck by the name of Darrell Ehrlick spouted bullshit about a death cult from his perch editing the “Daily Montanan”, part of a wider propaganda project known as the “States Newsroom”.

Here’s a portion of Ehrlick’s “commentary” from September 23rd, 2021, to give readers a sense of what “health” measures this fat fuck was trying to impose on the population of Big Sky Country:

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte continues an approach to COVID-19 and governing like it’s some kind of death cult, insisting that personal responsibility will somehow cure the menace of disease, despite every example to the contrary. Just Tuesday, Montana lost its 1900th person to COVID as we speed toward the 2,000 mark.

Gianforte’s hubris, or as Demosthenes said better, his “demon of arrogance,” has driven him to call out the National Guard to help the hospitals cope with the crushing tide of COVID-19 patients, most of whom self-stubbornly refused the best medical advice in the world. Last week, Gianforte did nothing while at least one hospital requested extra morgue trucks to deal with the overflow of dead bodies, a sentence so bizarre to type that it seems surreal.

Yes, it certainly was surreal to have a global pressure campaign deployed against global citizens using every manipulative tactic possible to coerce, ridicule, and threaten humans into taking an experimental jab, but that’s what happened, and it wasn’t just Anthony Fauci who was responsible, as evidenced by the most important document that exists about what happened (before it happened), and is STILL HAPPENING, with pre and post-pandemic narrative control, and that’s the SPARS document (PDF):

Before I get to this document, here’s a link from 2021 that highlights how my criticism of the fat fuck writing for the Daily Montanan was taken by a local Covid true believer who can STILL be found on Facebook defending Fauci:

For those who might still be trapped in the TRUST THE SCIENCE cult, the odd fact that John Hopkins developed a very accurate script years before the pandemic probably won’t seem significant. But, for those who REFUSED to suspend their critical thinking faculties in 2020, this document is one I think we might still be able to learn something from, so let’s take a look, starting with the preface:

After setting the scene with this excerpt from the preface, lets jump ahead to Chapter 4. Here’s a passage that anticipates natural health advocates and minority groups resisting “THE SCIENCE’S” solution to a novel coronavirus:

An excerpt from Chapter 5 anticipates how “going viral” on social media would be a threat to getting everyone jabbed with experimental “medicine” because the counter-messaging could lack the necessary “empathy” to be convincing. After reading the following excerpt, I thought to myself, are they trying to teach psychopaths how to act like humans? (emphasis mine):

True believers won’t be disturbed by these excerpts because, for them, when there’s a HEALTH CRISIS, the ends justify the means. Critics, though, might appreciate how much they were being thought about before the REAL “pandemic” hit.

For the John Hopkins crowd, one strategy considered (and then used in real life) for addressing the “challenges” of communication entails using celebrities and experts to convey the official messaging. Yes, they really do come right out and say this shit, probably because they really do think you, the skeptical public, are that stupid:

While there’s more I could say about what this SPARS document predicted, I find this topic to be depressing, demoralizing, and ultimately counter-productive to the local issues I purposely focus on. The commenter I called out above, for example, is someone who I know mostly agrees with my local criticism, and he’s someone who has assisted me (to the extent that he’s able) with the lawfare I’ve been dealing with now for three hellish years.

That’s why I’m going to conclude this post on a positive note, and the positive note I’d like to conclude with is referencing the following book, one that ANY victim of the TRUST THE SCIENCE cult should read, because I think it will help:

Thanks for reading!

Today’s post is about MORE than just numbers, it’s about a bathing suit called REMITTANCE that’s intended, as a funding “tool”, to provide cover for the body politic. Here’s how they do it.

First, it’s VERY important to conduct government business about the budget when the LEAST likely amount of people are paying attention, which is why I suspect Missoula officials use what I’ll call the “middle” strategy, scheduling the first opportunity to see the Mayor’s budget in the middle of the day, and in the middle of the week, and in the middle of summer.

For those who didn’t know about the mid-week committee hearing, here’s the breakdown in three graphs of where the 3.8% tax increase will be going:

Do you see the sleight-of-hand at work in the last two graphs? If not, let me try to explain what I think is going on here.

The second graph claims to be the parts of the budget that appear on your tax bill, while the third one claims to include ALL expenditures, with the additional $70 million coming from entities “with their own revenue”. Since the Missoula Redevelopment Agency (MRA) is NOT included in the second graph, that leads me to believe MRA is one of the entities, like the Parking Commission, that is said to have its “own revenue”.

Ok, but does it?

While this might be seen as quibbling over a definition, my perspective of MRA is that it legally STEALS money from the General Fund through Urban Renewal Districts and, unlike parking violators paying tickets, Missoula taxpayers in those districts DO NOT GET A CHOICE about it the way a car commuter can choose not to park where they might get ticketed.

The REAL fun, though, comes when you try to understand how the remittance strategy from MRA intends to cover the bloated body politic with a skimpy bathing suit that STILL lets taxpayers see how fat and disgusting our local government has become. Thankfully, for our elected braintrust, local media is more than willing to help out with misleading headlines downplaying the 3.8% tax increase:

Isn’t this an amazing example of local media manipulation? Instead of acknowledging reality, which is that the budget DID CHANGE by increasing, this KPAX reporter seems to be suggesting that a 3.8% tax increase is not a notable change to the city’s budget.

Further down in this manipulative article about the city budget we get this:

To balance the budget this year, a one-time remittance of $2.5 million from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency will be given to the city.

To simplify, a remittance is essentially a transfer of funds between different government entities.

How many times can a “one-time” funding tool be used before local media stops calling it a “one-time” remittance tool? By my count, this 2024 article about using MRA money to balance the budget makes it sound like Missoula has been using this MRA remittance strategy to balance the budget since 2022 (or the same year Engen’s Missoula came out criticizing Tax Increment Financing).

Hmmm.

In each of the past two budgeting cycles, the city has faced what it has described as a revenue shortfall. To fill the gap between existing taxes and the desired level of service, it has asked MRA to fill the gap by providing a tax remittance.

To do so, Buchanan said the agency has tried to distribute the remittance as equally as possible across its urban renewal districts. It also considered a district’s capacity to surrender funding, and any pending or potential project that might emerge in 2025.

To cover the city’s needs, MRA took a $1 million remittance from URD II and a $3.5 million remittance from URD III, or the Midtown area. Buchanan said that providing the remittance from the more active districts doesn’t currently place any projects in jeopardy – yet.

“Running government on the back of urban renewal districts isn’t sustainable,” said Buchanan. “But we’re fortunate as a city to have this tool available so we can provide the level of service we need to provide. Thank goodness we’re here. I don’t think anything will be jeopardized by this.”

“Thank goodness we’re here“, Ellen Buchanan says? Does she not know that Missoula taxpayers WOULDN’T BE HERE if their tax money wasn’t being siphoned off by her shadow government to run the kind of political slush fund that any mafia organization would be jealous of?

Of course she knows, just like Mayor Davis knows–that’s why Mayor Davis sounds so full of shit in one of the three clips I curated from last Wednesday’s committee hearing. Here’s the first one:

The second clip features a point made by Stacie “A Better Big Sky” Anderson about how Missoula fucks over schools with their remittance scheme tool:

While I consider Stacie to be one of the more toxic characters on Council, she makes a very important point here about the three-way bribe flowing from MRA to the city, the county, and Missoula’s school district, because the SCHOOL DISTRICT portion doesn’t even go to the schools, it goes to the STATE of Montana, since it’s STATE law that delineates how school districts around the state are funded, and understanding THAT process is even more confusing than unpacking the WHITE KNIGHT (Ellen Buchanan) riding in to save the day on her TROJAN horse (MRA).

Did anyone from the public register concern at this committee hearing in the middle of the day/middle of the week/middle of the summer? Yes, of the 78,903 people who are estimated to live within the city limits of Missoula, one person did make a comment, which included an invitation to attend a more dynamic meeting open to the public:

While commenting on city politics is fun and all, my Wednesday last week was dominated by court and trying to understand how there could be “rumblings” that I’ve been sighted in places downtown that I’m forbidden to be, considering pre-trial supervision knows EXACTLY WHERE I AM at every moment of every day, per my ankle-monitor.

This is important to consider because the PUBLIC MONEY at the County level includes the cost of operating the jail and other parts of “justice” system, which pays a County Attorney, like Mac Bloom, to pass along provably inaccurate hearsay at an omnibus court hearing.

I didn’t specify anything about the process I’m going through in my public comment to the County Commissioners. Instead I reminded the Commissioners about what the Sheriff’s Office did three years ago when they collectively sued the County to get more money for payroll.

For more context on that shakedown, you can read this post, titled “Mineral County Is At War With Itself, Assisted By A Law Firm Specializing In Money Shakedown Schemes For Badges Across Western Montana“. If you read that post you’ll better appreciate why I said what I said here:

I’m not bringing up the “parity pay” lawsuit simply because it’s budget season and the timing is right. I’m bringing up the lawsuit, enacted by the Reep, Bell and Jasper law office, because my sources tell me that the JASPER part of that law firm, Lance, is out.

If Lance Jasper fell off the wagon, like I’ve been told, and if he was forced out of his law firm over missing money, which is what the rumor mill thinks, then I think the timing of traveling down parity pay memory lane is perfect, since it leads to Mineral County, where David Barsotti supposedly died sometime last month.

Hmmm.

Anyway, if you appreciate the freedom I seem to have to expose local power dynamics, now is a good time to remind readers that FREEDOM ISN’T FREE, so donate (if you can) to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

On July 21st someone discharged bear spray inside Missoula’s trillion dollar library. While we, the public, are told that the police are “investigating” what happened, so far nothing has been shared about WHO discharged bear spray and WHY. Since the public PAID for this library/asylum, shouldn’t we be getting more information about the use of the library as an insane asylum?

The news article about this incident is worthless. Here’s what’s been reported thus far:

On July 21, bear spray was discharged in the Missoula Public Library, prompting an evacuation and police investigation.

Library director Slaven Lee told MTN that staff cleared the building after the spraying occurred.

Lee shared that while people were given the okay to return by the fire department, the library decided to close for the remainder of Monday in an abundance of caution.

The library safely reopened Tuesday.

Police investigating bear spray incident at Missoula Public Library

Two weeks later, nothing more has been released about why someone discharged bear spray inside the Missoula Public Library.

My daughter is a voracious reader and goes to the library all the time. As a father, I would prefer that street people arrested for assault DON’T set up appointments with their Public Defender AT the library, but that is exactly what happened last week when John Roy Simpers made his appearance in Justice Court.

I wish there was a mugshot to share because I’ve seen this little troll around town for the past year, laughing and talking to himself while using a piece of metal rebar to emphasize his internal dialogue by hitting the concrete curb around the Courthouse, laughing with each violent strike.

When John Simpers made his initial appearance in court, barely able to keep it together in front of the judge, it was the first time he had interacted directly with his Public Defender, who for some reason is based in Helena, not Missoula. She told the judge that her client would always call from the library, but when she called right back, he was never around.

I observed all this because I was ALSO in court on July 29th in front of Judge Beal, who ALSO is involved with the library. Hmmm.

I wonder what the people listed above think when parents have to retrieve their children from the scene of a potential chemical attack? Do they second guess their decision to turn the trillion dollar library into an insane asylum?

Since the Missoula Public Library gets public money, the public IS able to sift through board meetings and other documents available to download online, like I did yesterday.

What did I find?

I found money problems, a plan to bill Medicaid through hiring a social worker, and an incident report on Ron Phillips. Let’s take a look.

This screenshot is from April. For more context, here is how the conversation developed over the last few months:

To summarize what I’m seeing here, the library asked the Missoula public for millions and millions of dollars to build this cutting-edge facility ostensibly for books and other library-type activities, but instead of doing that, which I guess isn’t financially sustainable, the leadership in this brilliant town thinks it’s a good idea to transform the library into an asylum, especially one for mentally ill people charged with crimes.

At least they’re using a RAD acronym to open the library doors to judicially involved crazy people!

What does providing RAD-ical aid to our community look like? Well, sometimes it looks like this:

In case the text is too difficult to read, I’ll copy/paste some of the most relevant details from Ron Phillips’ incident report:

Lester:
First engagement I went to tell Ron that Patrons can’t lay on the floor in study rooms. Ron did not like the way I knocked on the door and after I directed him to stay off the floor, he advised me, “You do not get to tell me what to do.” I advised Ron, “I do get to tell you what to do.” I then left the study room area for about twenty minutes, walking rounds. I went back to check on Ron, and he was inappropriately laying across two chairs. I waved through the window and Ron flipped me off. I then opened the door and informed Ron, “You have to leave for abuse of staff.” Ron informed me then, “I am not leaving.” I informed Ron that MPD will be called and you will be removed.” Ron began talking about his rights and wanted to engage arguing. 911 call was placed and Ron left to speak with MPD. He eventually left property and MPD left.

Ronnie:
My first interaction with Ron was the previous day 06/23/26, when I was walking along the sidewalk in front of the library and noticed Ron smoking a cigarette and leaning his head back against the building with his eyes closed. I walked up to him and asked “Sir, are you doing alright?” to which he responded “Do I not look like I’m fucking doing alright?” I responded that he had his eyes closed and I just wanted to check on him, where he stated, “I’m just fucking sitting here man, why are you harassing me and asking if I’m doing alright? I’m sitting on a public sidewalk.” I told Ron that I am the Safety Specialist here at the library and you’re leaning your back on the building, so it’s my job to check on you. He said “If I tell you I’m doing alright will you leave me the fuck alone?” I confirmed that I would, so he then said he was doing fine and I told him to have a good day and walked away.

Lester and I were doing our normal rounds, when we noticed Ron was lying on his side in the study room, which laying on the floor anywhere in the library is prohibited. Lester knocked on the door before opening it and told Ron that he couldn’t lay on the floor and needed to sit in a chair. Ron said he didn’t appreciate Lester’s loud knocking, and he couldn’t be told what to do. Lester responded that he could tell him what to do, and he just needed to not lay on the floor. As Lester was responding to Ron, he started getting up from the ground, so Lester closed the door to not stand around and punitively monitor as even if Ron was upset, he was at this point complying with directions and policy. Lester and I left the floor to continue patrolling the building, at which point we returned to our desk on the first floor. Lester left to do another patrol while I was working at the computer when I received a radio call from Lester “Ronnie: third floor, now.” When I arrived to the third floor, Lester was on the phone with 911 dispatch while Ron was arguing with him, with his cellphone out appearing to be recording the interaction, telling Lester that he cannot trespass him because it’s a public building. Lester responded that he can and he is, and since he refused to leave he is calling for MPD to remove him from the library. Ron continued to argue, saying he’ll meet them outside but needed to grab his belongings. I monitored Ron from a distance as he grabbed his belongings from elsewhere on the floor as Lester was still on the phone. After Ron gathered his belongings, I placed myself next to the podium next to staff where Ron handed them the laptop he had rented for it to be checked in. Ron continued to argue with Lester about his right to the library with his phone out as he went into the elevator.

Virginia: When I got to the third floor, Ron was carrying the laptop out of the study room and heading towards the east end of the building. Ron was stating it was his right to swear in the library because it was a public place. Lester stated he could not in fact flip him off while he was finishing his call will 911. After Ron gathered his belongings, he continued to argue he could say or do whatever he wanted. Lester stated that he could not harass staff (different verbiage was used), could not swear, and that MPD was on the way. As Ron returned his laptop and made his way onto the elevator, he stated he would see them outside.

I ran down the stairs to see if he had exited the building. Ron walked out the main entrance with no issues. He proceeded to wait on the sidewalk for MPD. As I was walking another patron to the bus stop, he followed us briefly asking for a smoke, then went back around front to wait for MPD.

Crystal:
I saw Ron lying on the floor in the study room and witnessed Lester knock and inform him that he needed to get up. Ron was upset about Lester’s tone and how hard he knocked on the door. Ron was lying down across two chairs in the study room when I walked by next. Lester waved at Ron again to get his attention and tell Ron to sit upright in the chair. Ron then flipped off Lester, and Lester told him he needed to leave the library for the day. Ron said he wasn’t going to leave and Lester called 911 to remove him. When Ron was leaving the study room, he started yelling at Lester about his right to be in the library and his right to swear in the library, complaining that staff told him he couldn’t say “Fuck” in the building. He went downstairs to speak with MPD.

Ron Phillips is an interesting anecdotal example of the type of person who feels entitled to dominate public spaces, as evidenced by any one of his 195 videos on YouTube. After watching way too many of Ron’s weird videos, featuring him recording random people, and cops, in public, I’m convinced that Tim Dillon’s show on Saturday foretold the future about the new, hot commodity that people with resources will start obtaining for themselves: PRIVACY FROM INSANITY!

To wrap up today’s post about catering to the insane people making this town more and more unlivable, a well-meaning citizen recently tried doing something nice in the vicinity of what I consider to be a Missoula No-Go Zone, the California Street bridge, where a dude was recently stabbed to death.

Not surprisingly (at least to me), the gesture of trash pickup was NOT received well.

I spent about 15 minutes walking around the California Street Bridge and Lion’s Park today and filled this entire cleanup bag with trash.

I understand that a lot of people are struggling right now. Housing is expensive, the economy has been rough, and many people are in difficult situations. This post is not about judging anyone for being homeless.

What is frustrating is that there are garbage cans all over this area, yet the amount of litter is unbelievable. Bottles, cans, food containers, plastic, and other trash are scattered throughout the park and along the riverbank. There are also several camps in the wooded area with even more garbage and used needles, but I was not willing to go any closer without proper protective equipment.

I actually brought a second cleanup bag because I expected to find more than this, but I never even got the chance to start filling it. While I was cleaning up, I was confronted by someone who was extremely intoxicated and began harassing me and threatening me for “being on their property.” At that point I decided it was smarter to leave than continue picking up trash.

Before anyone says to call law enforcement, I did not see much point. Nothing seems to change when people call, and the same problems continue week after week.

This river and these parks belong to everyone. Whether you are housed, unhoused, visiting, or just out for a walk, we all share the responsibility of keeping them clean and safe. We can have compassion for people going through difficult circumstances while also expecting public spaces to be treated with respect. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

For more context on Missoula’s trillion dollar library, here are some posts I’ve written since the bond enabled its construction five years ago:

“On Enduring The Missoula Democrat Mayoral Candidate Forum In The Trillion Dollar Library” (August 1st, 2023)

“My Lego Meth Lab Vs. Their Library DNA Climber” (July 12th, 2024)

“A Dose Of Hope? How About A Dose Of NOPE!” (March 17th, 2025)

“While Missoula Becomes A Hub For VIPs, The Library Continues To Be A Hub Of Embarrassment” (June 5th, 2025)

“Who Supports Urine Testing Library Board Members And MRA Board Members For Being High AF?” (September 17th, 2025)

“Has The Missoula Redevelopment Agency Ever Been This Stupid?” (September 19th, 2025)

“Is the Missoula Redevelopment Agency Pulling A PR Retreat From Public Scrutiny?” (December 3rd, 2025)

Tomorrow I’ll be writing about Missoula’s budget, both at the city and county level, and the non-homeless panhandlers begging their paymasters for more tax money, so stay tuned! And if you have any spare change, my new GoFundMe page is waiting for your donation. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

The “JC” who joined me when I created this blog ten years ago passed away from throat cancer in December and today I’m finally honoring his memory.

I wasn’t able to see him before his passing, or attend his memorial in May, but a couple of factors reminded me that Jim deserves to be honored for being a man of principle who acted on those principles, even if it meant identifying one’s own bad habits and making changes, like walking away from the bottle and neoliberal Democrats.

Before I get to Jim’s writing, here’s a bit about his life from the obituary:

Jim was the youngest of four children, arriving a full six years after the next youngest brother, John. With such a large age gap from his siblings, Jim’s playmates were schoolmates, neighbors, and Club kids, with whom he built lifelong friendships.

Growing up, Jim was an intelligent, sensitive child. He was often home alone after school as a teenager, so he learned some rudimentary cooking skills that later turned into a love of good food and a reputation as an excellent cook.

As a young adult, Jim embraced the ethos of the ’70s. He was the wild child, the hippy, the peace and love center of the Coefield family. While his family looked on with a mixture of bemusement and curiosity, Jim had purity of purpose. He envisioned a world where people treated each other kindly; a world driven by love, compassion, and community, rather than profit. He strove to embody these values throughout his life.

And while most of the world would continue to let him down, Jim found the community he sought in the Rainbow Family; he attended as many Rainbow Family gatherings as he could throughout his life, relishing the money-free society governed by consensus and driven by volunteerism.

Since being “let down” is the most consistent effect one feels when supporting Democrats, my own disillusionment put me in ideological alignment with Jim’s more experienced perspective at the blog we both contributed to, 4&20 Blackbirds. That’s where Jim wrote this post in 2013, titled “Moneyball Campaigns, Stasi 2.0 and the Death of Democracy in America“. Here’s an excerpt:

After emphasizing President Carter’s perspective, Jim zeroed in on another Jim, Jim Messina, the political data wizard who attended classes at the University of Montana before helping Obama get reelected in 2012. After putting Messina and Obama into the manipulative context they deserve, Jim references a DATA CENTER in Utah, well over a decade before “data centers” became the hottest topic of protest:

I started contributing to 4&20 Blackbirds in 2010, alongside writers like jhwygirl, Pete Talbot, and a former co-worker from my homeless shelter days, Patrick Duganz. I identified as a Progressive and cast votes for Jon Tester in 2006 to stop George Bush’s evil wars, and Barack Obama in 2008 after seeing him do his schtick at the Adam’s Center in Missoula, which I’m embarrassed to say brought tears to my eyes.

Twenty years after casting a vote for Jon Tester, I’m able to entertain this conspiracy theory about his alleged role as a possible puppet master scheming to throw the Senate race for a Republican because people like Jim, many years ago, were able to resist the cult-like thinking of Democratic fealty in order to clearly see the cold-hard cash flowing to Tester, like this post JC wrote in 2012, which comes with a helpful list:

The real gift of a local blog like 4&20 Blackbirds isn’t chiming in on national politics, it’s the focus on LOCAL stuff, like the cultural/financial shift of allowing Cannabis to compete with alcohol in the market of fucking up human minds so those minds can exist in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance without attempting self-termination.

One very interesting example of following the LOCAL weed money came from Mr. Pete Talbot, son of John (the former spook who became a newspaper guy for Lee Enterprises). I think this context is definitely worth considering, since son of John is talking about newspaper advertising revenue:

Did Pete Talbot get any worthy responses from “others in the know” about the newspaper industry in Missoula? He sure did, and it’s a comment from the same asshole who ended up KILLING the weekly newspaper he owned AFTER selling it off to Lee Enterprises, isn’t that interesting?

Eight years after making this comment, in 2018, Matt Gibson chose September 11th as the conspicuous and ominous date to shudder the Missoula Independent without giving so much as a respectful notice to staff.

The Indy’s staff unionized in April, and were in the midst of collective bargaining with Lee Enterprises when they received the notice this morning.

Derek Brouwer, an Indy staff reporter and bargaining committee member, said Lee Enterprises had not reached out past this morning’s communications, despite multiple attempts by the Indy staff to contact it.

“We are trying to gather as much information as is possible to better understand why they made the decision they have and why they conducted it the way that they have,” Brouwer said.

The Missoula Independent’s website no longer works. The web archives and old Indy stories online redirect to the Missoulian website, and the staff is locked out of their emails.

The supreme irony here is that two years previous, after suggesting Bernie Sanders was a complicit sheepdog in his political cuckolding by the Hillary Clinton machine, Jim and I experienced the same treatment from the original Blackbird, Jay Stevens, who locked us out virtually from being able to post at 4&20 Blackbirds, thus creating the catalyst that led to Zoom Chron (originally called Reptile Dysfunction, since my two pseudonyms had been lizard and William Skink).

While that Indy article about us bloggers is no longer available anywhere (and I’ve looked), you can still read JC’s posts at both 4&20 Blackbirds and Zoom Chron, like his first one here, posted on June 17th, 2015:

For legal purposes it’s important to note that I am writing about my fellow blogger, Jim Coefield, and what HE wrote, NOT the legislator who Judge Vannatta has given 10 years of protection to from this blogger’s public criticism.

For an idea of what I was writing about in my first post 11 years ago, it was essentially wondering what the fuck a “Progressive” even was.

Social “reforms” are needed because social “problems” exist, and the problem of alcohol and drug abuse is catastrophically worse today than it was in 2015, not to mention some repeating themes, like a local Democrat getting in trouble for driving drunk.

No, I’m talking about Pam Walzer, duh! And, for insights on how us local bloggers were processing poor Pam’s DUI at the time, here is some of the commentary, starting with a portion of a comment from JC:

Yes, the window dressing can be seen in the obituary omissions of Tami Ursich, which I felt compelled to write about last Friday, and the window dressing can be seen in John Engen’s legacy, which omits the awkward fact that his alcoholism was widely known about for years, and protected at the highest levels of local government, as evidenced by former Police Chief, Mike Brady, and his cushy post-Chief job with the city, which he still has today.

Going back to the female Democrat with a DUI history who I AM able to legally write about, another comment from that comment thread caught my attention because it features my former co-worker, Patrick Duganz, discussing his job at the Indy, and what he thought about a local politician’s alleged crime, having previously interviewed her for his job. The response from JC shows what being consistent with one’s principles looks like:

While anyone who lives long enough experiences people dying, the two most significant deaths that shaped my own life include my high school friend, Lisa, who died during my freshman year in college after being mowed down in the street by a drunk driver while she was walking home from the bar. The other death, Sean Stevenson’s, ALSO had alcohol abuse as an underlying factor.

Jim Coefield, by example, helped me see that a life without the crutch of alcohol was possible. He had a nice piece of land in Arlee on which to live, he had a partner he lived with, and he lived long enough to be there for his daughter on her big day.

This is my obituary for Jim Coefield, a man of principle who saw the clouds gathering and acted accordingly. On the second day of the month when I became a father myself 18 years ago, I hope this late recognition of Jim helps soften the sadness I’m sure his daughter and other family members are still feeling.

Thanks for reading.