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When Todd Keith Spence physically assaulted TWO state workers during a 2022 homeless camp cleanup and received only ONE misdemeanor assault charge, I was confused. Surely this was an opportunity to criminally charge a violent, non-compliant sex offender with at least TWO assault charges, right?

Wrong.

Here’s an excerpt from my article (link above) that I wrote about the incident, which I discussed with the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office after the violent attack occurred:

The details are where this story gets absolutely maddening, especially when you consider this day, September 8th, was the same day our elected leaders got together on the Missoula County Courthouse lawn to beg the Missoula electorate to pass the 5 million dollar mill levy for “crisis services” this fall. Those services include the Mobile Crisis Unit.

I wish the Mobile Crisis Unit would have been on site when Todd Spence returned to the area of the clean up because I doubt they would have momentarily detained him on the sidewalk, the way a volunteer described seeing Sheriff Deputies do, then inexplicably RELEASE him with another empty verbal command to leave, which Spence promptly ignored.

And then guess what the Sheriff Deputies did? They DROVE AWAY!

After obtaining a safety vest, Todd Spence took his bike and went to defend the destruction of his home, which entailed climbing a bulldozer and punching a MDT staff repeatedly in the face. This is how Todd Spence dealt with the confusion he had expressed earlier, at the volunteer sign-in area, as to why MDT was present, stating the property out there was his. I guess after 3 years of allowing this man to live out there, he got the impression the land belonged to him.

When I asked Deputy Jessop, later in the day, why the Mobile Crisis Unit wasn’t brought in, I was told that Spence wasn’t in the right state of mind for them to be effective, so the Sheriff’s Office didn’t want to “waste their time”. Instead, they let Spence go, and it wasn’t just two assaults that resulted. A local reporter, who was there to cover the cleanup, had to quickly evacuate the area after the volunteer coordinator called to warn her of the developing situation.

To contrast this situation, the FIVE charges Brandon Bryant faced last Friday during a jury trial were the result of standing in front of the bar where an altercation had just occurred (Bryant was NOT the instigator) and not putting his stick down fast enough when commanded to do so by local law enforcement.

While the jury rationally determined Brandon Bryant was NOT guilty of assaulting the four cops who beat and tased him (the most serious charge), the estrogen-dominated jury DID find Bryant guilty of obstruction, resistance, a subsequent “privacy in communications” charge, and some other bullshit I can’t recall at the moment.

Justice served?

When I experienced jail for the first time as the result of a weaponized restraining order it was the classification process, and my two cell mates hatred of a coloring book image on our wall, that gave me some of the final insights I needed to understand WHY a certain County Attorney (Pabst) and Sheriff (McDermott) go so excited about “jail diversion” five years ago.

To decode the jail questionnaire I had to take before getting assigned to a “pod” I should note that a brush with the law in my youth for alcohol possession had already prepared me for the kind of tests that ask you the same question in different ways in order to get at some underlying, unspoken factor.

While it was easy to see what the “chemical dependency evaluation” was trying to get at (if, and how much, I was lying about my use of substances) the test I took in jail seemed to be all about my “safety”, and if I didn’t feel safe, why I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t understand at the time what the underlying factor was, since the whole experience was new and disorienting, but, in hindsight, it became obvious which subpopulation was being identified for extra safety precautions.

The coloring book picture seemed innocent enough until my cellies explained the context of their hatred for it. The pod I had been assigned to had originally been the one for sex offenders, but because of their growing number inside jail, they had moved that population to a larger pod.

“Notice what THAT picture has that OUR pictures don’t?” One of my cellmates asked me.

I compared the coloring book material my cell mates had to the one they tried scraping off the wall and, yeah, none of theirs featured kids snorkeling. This seemed to confirm, to them, a degree of catering to certain tastes by jail staff that my cell mates very much opposed to.

Keeping offenders safe in jail is a government job (or a private sector CoreCivic one, in the case of Nathan Lake) that could result in costly litigation if not done properly, so when you have a subpopulation that comes with additional risks to that bottomline, you have to take extra precautions, and THAT feeds an underlying tension of both individual AND institutional resentment that would collectively prefer to externalize that risk as much as possible.

On the other side of the jail cell, then, a whole world has blossomed for the societal substrata that technology has helped proliferate. Locally that means the Sheriff’s Office getting into bed with affordable housing efforts, like Blueline Development’s Trinity project, but, nationally, I think something larger and more culturally corrosive is happening.

Sex offenders, on the outside, are natural snitches managed by probation and parole officers who require their clients to report ANY contact with law enforcement. I saw how this worked up close when the kitchen manager at Silk Road was questioned as a person of interest in the accidental drowning death of Leah Hartley.

It’s been six months since Leah’s death and, after accessing her autopsy report via a third party, I’m confident that her culture killed her, not an individual. So I’ll be writing about that culture and the supposed “artists” adding their names to the list of locals that would prefer I not write about the things I am writing about.

To wrap up this post I’ll remind readers how the state of Montana, thanks to the Montana Supreme Court, is making big changes about what can be ascertained regarding offenders and their risk to local communities.

The Montana Sexual or Violent Offender Registry (SVOR) is undergoing major changes following a Montana Supreme Court ruling that limits what information the state can publicly share, even retroactively.

The decision affects more than 1,100 Montana sexual and violent offenders, 90 of whom are Tier 3, the highest risk offenders to the community. The order removes or reduces long-standing requirements for people who were convicted before newer registry laws were enacted.

Photos, convictions, and living or working restrictions are no longer publicly available in those cases, prompting concern from law enforcement and community members, such as Hannah Flocchini.

While some of these concerns are theoretical, my time working at the Poverello Center gave me concrete examples of how some offenders used those services, like free food, to lure potential victims, and this week I think I’ll be telling some of those stories, so stay tuned.

Until I read this op-ed by George Ochenski, titled “Dark money targets Llew Jones in GOP’s civil war”, I didn’t fully appreciate how Montana Democrats had become so stupid.

Now I understand.

As “Montana’s longest-running columnist”, George Ochenski is shoveling bullshit to his readers from the get-go by framing the effort to target Llew Jones as coming from “dark money”. Nope!

If you accept the premise that “dark money” means obscuring from scrutiny the entity responsible for engaging in political activity, like launching a political attack, let me clear up Ochenski’s disingenuous framing by identifying one prominent backer of this anti-Jones effort with a simple link and screenshot.

Instead of telling his readers that AFP is openly targeting Llew Jones because LOTS of conservative voters in Montana were VERY upset that their votes were undermined ALL legislative session by Mr. Watery Eyes, his parrot, and 8 other RINOs, Ochenski writes shit like this:

Of course the dark money forces now attempting to crush Jones would much rather have had that money go to corporations and the already wealthy as tax breaks instead of doling out a few hundred bucks to financially hurting Montanans — or even worse, putting it in an interest-earning trust fund instead of continuously scrambling for funds and raising taxes when roads, bridges and water systems need replacement.

Jones put it bluntly: “To dark-money operators — and the ideological hardliners who do their bidding — taking out the informal leader of Republicans focused on solutions over D.C. slogans would be a trophy. Not just to silence me, but to intimidate the rest: Kiss the party bosses’ ring, or you’re next.”

Bucking the GOP’s MAGA loyalty tests is an incredibly brave stand for a Republican officeholder. But Jones is absolutely right — and despite the hundreds of thousands of dark money dollars being spent in attack ads against him, he may well prevail. Why? Because Montanans appreciate straight talk, taking care of our state’s and each other’s needs as Jones has, and value individuality over political party intimidation and control.

Sure, George, I’m sure Montanans have all the folksy tendencies you describe, but your brain is obviously stuck in VERY outdated modes of political thinking, so the quicker you and your ilk are mothballed, the better.

While I believe BOTH parties are deeply infected by an anti-human agenda, the most threatening cultural accelerationists exist on the left, and I will call them out anywhere I see them, including this opinion writer I once appreciated before I knew better.

Thanks for reading!

Why vote for this guy in November? What has Jeremiah Petersen done since 2023 other than hide his face from the public and retreat from the Missoula County courthouse? And why did it take a phone call to the election office to determine that Jeremiah Petersen is, indeed, running as a DEMOCRAT?

When I consulted local media all I got was vague, boilerplate bullshit and NO info on what party Petersen was choosing to affiliate himself with.

Petersen announced on Tuesday that he had officially filed for re-election.

Since taking office in 2023, Petersen says he has strengthened public safety, improved response times, and increased deputy training and retention.

A lifelong Missoula County resident and 22-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, Petersen says there’s still important work ahead in supporting deputies and ensuring fair law enforcement.

After failing to find the most basic information in the KPAX “news” article, I went to the County election website and, guess what? The candidate filing list wouldn’t load! Was it really going to be THIS difficult to find out if Jeremiah Petersen was going to take the big D or run from it?

My next step was to CALL the election office and wait for nearly 10 minutes on hold just to bug poor Ashley about Jeremiah’s mysterious “D”. Ashly, after listening to how enthusiastic I was at 8:30am to obtain this very important piece of information, confirmed that “D” was indeed the political party that Sheriff Petersen still identified as. Thanks Ashley!

One reason this party affiliation is important can be found in the Missoula County Jail Diversion Plan, which contains stuff like this:

Does Sheriff Jeremiah Petersen still believe in the “housing first” model? Or, more likely, is he too busy running away from the Missoula County Courthouse to think about outdated models of dealing with serious mental illness and very destructive drug addiction issues?

The retreat from the Missoula County Courthouse lawn was first articulated at the City Club event earlier this month, which you can watch here, and follows the physical retreat the Sheriff’s Office took last July when they officially moved their offices closer to the jail, which I’ll be writing about next week.

Knowing how informal Montana lawmen can be, I wanted to know if Police Chief Colyer and Sheriff Petersen have actually formalized this jurisdictional shift in responsibility, so I emailed the people who get paid to communicate to people like me, the inquisitive public, and I cc’d the ones who sign the paychecks for Sheriff Deputies–you know, those HIGHER paychecks our previous Sheriff, T.J. McDermott, SUED Missoula County to get after handshake deals went sour behind the scenes, but that’s another story.

While I wait for a response, I’ll offer some free advice to Sheriff Petersen: don’t run from the D, Sheriff, embrace it, because when it comes to the law, some of us understand better than others who is really being protected.

And it’s not “the public”.

Thanks for reading!

First, let’s state the obvious: no one believes anything in 2026 is non-partisan, including the courts. So what is up with the ballot initiative paying assholes in Missoula to harass people for their signature?

There is a desperate and cynical ploy from Montana Democrats to convince and/or gaslight Montanans into believing the bullshit, shoveled by entities like the ACLU, that Montanans prefer PEOPLE over PARTY when choosing judges in this VERY corrupt judicial system.

Here’s the bullshit I will be decoding for today’s post from the ACLU website:

Judges should be elected based on their record and qualifications, not their political party. Montanans have been electing judges in non-partisan elections since 1935.

Politicians in Helena are actively trying to take control of Montana’s court system by passing laws that inject party politics into our judicial system. We need to protect our courts from the threat of political control and ensure that judges remain nonpartisan. This ballot measure protects our long-standing tradition of selecting judges based on the person, not the party.

My assertion, which I will I back up by exposing the groups behind this effort, is that party politics is already all over the “court system”, it’s just difficult to see behind the smokescreen of “non-partisanship”.

If the courts were NOT a partisan-soaked machine functioning as part attack dog, part protection racket, for Montana Democrats, then explain how State Senator, Ellie Boldman, still has a prominent career?

The notorious political rise of this Idaho transplant who used a homeless shelter in Missoula to launch her political career is actually one of the best ways to see the REAL political tentacles slithering behind this effort to keep Montanans bamboozled about how bad the court system has become.

Last month two separate initiatives became one and, according to the Daily Montanan, here’s who, and what, is paying the signature-gatherers to panhandle Missoulians for their scribbled consent:

According to a Thursday press release, Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges, the group started by Ted Dick and Pepper Peterson that sponsored CI-131, announced their endorsement of CI-132.

The consolidation “signals a united effort to protect Montana voters’ 90-year right to nonpartisan judicial elections,” Dick said in a press release. “Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges believes Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts has a strong policy and the resources to ensure the initiative qualifies for the ballot, which is why we have chosen to formally endorse CI-132.”

Dick has formally requested to withdraw CI-131 with the Montana Secretary of State.

Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts is a coalition comprising multiple advocacy groups throughout the state including Montana Federation of Public Employees, Big Sky 55+, ACLU of Montana, Forward Montana, and Catalyst Montana.

The first name that gave the game away for me is the name “Pepper Petersen”, president and CEO of the Montana Cannabis Guild. To give you a sense of the hierarchy Pepper has within the weed industry, he would probably be getting pegged by Ellie Boldman if Montana Democrats ran EYES WIDE SHUT parties.

The next big giveaway is “Forward Montana”, the political creation of Matt Singer and former employer of Catherine Virginia Tooley Shepard before she committed suicide, a sad and tragic death that helps highlight how corrupt the “courts” are, since you would hope that a powerful woman involved in allegedly bullying Catherine for the extramarital affair she had with the woman’s husband would have faced some kind of accountability for her behavior.

I’ll give the ACLU an honorable mention, since Gwen Florio’s husband, Scott Crighton, was its sole director from 1988 to when he stepped down in 2015 to enjoy the retired life and eventually travel with his fiction-writing wife from their new home base in New Jersey.

Gwen Florio, I will remind readers, was instrumental in controlling the narrative around the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office ability to euthanize a black man in a private hospital room. Once that part of the narrative was controlled, the inability of the Stevenson family to find a willing lawyer ANYWHERE in Montana highlights, again, the power of what we’re talking about here to maintain this illusion for the courts and the “non-partisan” role they supposedly play in providing equal justice under the law.

Finally, my favorite “group” in this list of illusion-protectors is the rebranded group calling itself “Catalyst Montana”, formerly known as the Montana Human Rights Network, something I only found out because I showed up to rain on their exploit-the-homeless parade.

If you want to better understand where the Montana Human Rights Network was coming from before they felt the need to rebrand, here is a post I wrote four years ago, titled On Democracy, The Montana Human Rights Network, And The Wrong Kind Of Black People.

And, if you want to better understand “Catalyst Montana”, here’s a screenshot from their new effort to do the same shit under a different name:

In summary, this effort to maintain a false illusion of non-partisanship for the courts appears, upon further scrutiny, to be nothing more than partisan bullshit, but the partisans have money, while I, in contrast, am wondering how I’ll cover my bills this month.

If you would like to help with the latter, I’m my gofundme is 94% to $5,000, a modest figure I set out to raise several years ago. Meanwhile, ICE shooters and widows of dumb martyrs raise over a million.

Such is life in a 250 year old retarded dumpster fire where we allow psychopaths and cyborg nerds to openly harvest our children.

David Erickson finally found a politically-themed “news” story about a restaurant that his employer, Lee Enterprises, is willing to publish.

For contrast, when Sam Risho, the owner of Silk Road catering, ignored my request to remove an image from the work computer that showed my head on the body of Charlie Kirk getting shot, no one in local media gave a fuck. I guess a hostile work environment with a coke-abusing sex offender kitchen manager who was formally questioned in the death of my co-worker, Leah Hartley, just isn’t newsworthy enough for a retarded liberal town like Missoula.

A much more interesting and relevant story than trying to whip up woke outrage at a private business is the story of what Mountain Line got dealt this month in court.

If you had no idea Mountain Line was fighting AGAINST transparency in court, that’s because the media hasn’t covered this story at all. Maybe that will change now that YOUR taxpayer dollars will go to pay for the legal bill to the tune of $25,592 dollars.

Why would a public service that our idiot officials turned into a zero-fare shit-show be against transparency? The answer is right there in the question: Mountain Line is against transparency in order to PROTECT themselves from the consequences of their zero-fare shit-show. Duh.

To expound on what is at stake here, this is from the Facebook page where you can get the information that our local media, so far, has refused to report on:

The Court ruled that MUTD’s blanket denial of public records I.E. specifically, security camera videos from buses operating on public roads, funded by public dollars and recording in public spaces was a violation of the Montana Constitution, Article II, Sections 8 and 9, which protect every Montanan’s fundamental right to know and right to participate in government.

The Court ordered MUTD to produce the requested videos, and awarded attorney’s fees and costs to the Petitioner. Let that sink in. A public transit agency, funded by taxpayer money, denied a lawful public records request, fought it in court for over a year, and lost. These are public records. The public has a right to see them. We have a right to see how public employees like supervisors handle situations and events etc.

Like so many trends in this town related to the policies our officials have undertaken to help “marginalized” populations–like sex offenders who sometimes masturbate on our local buses in the presence of little girls–I’ve been all over this subject for years.

How did I know going zero-fare was going to increase access for sexual deviants? Seven years working at the Poverello Center, that’s how, so when I read this account from 2023, my long-held concerns were unfortunately validated:

A man has been charged with felony indecent exposure for exposing himself to a minor on a Missoula transit bus.

Jack Alan Mellem,36, is accused of exposing himself and masturbating in the presence of a young girl on a Mountain Line Bus on Wednesday, Feb. 8.

In charging documents, the 12-year-old girl told police she was on the bus when a bald man with a barbed-wire tattoo on his face entered the bus on North Avenue and Johnson Street.

The girl told police the man exposed himself and began touching himself while staring directly at her.

After this incident I wrote a blog post, which you can read here, that includes five other posts about our publicly-funded bus system going back to 2019. My insights come directly from the experience I had as the FIRST (and best, obviously) Homeless Outreach Coordinator, working with Mountain Line BEFORE they went zero-fare, then after, so I saw the changes that using warm bodies to chase Federal dollars produced.

Homeless people are great on paper for non-profit grifters like Susan Hay Patrick, but they can be challenging when they congregate for extended periods of time with booze and meth. That’s why our retarded city placed a hilarious sign by the Courthouse lawn-party that’s been going on as the weather has warmed.

Here is the language I’m sure some toxically empathic cog in the HIC (Homeless Industrial Complex) helped devise.

You must remove your belongings from the site within the timeframe on the notice. You should not leave behind any belongings you want to keep. All belongings left behind will be removed by the City. Items that are clearly discarded or valueless, hazardous, soiled, or subjected to rotting or spoiling will be discarded. The City will store remaining personal property for a period of 30 days. The City will post an Impound Notice if belongings are stored during the clean-up process.

If you think your belongings were stored, you can claim them by following the directions on the Impound Notice after the clean-up is complete. Information about how to claim your belongings is also available on the City’s website. You may retrieve any stored belongings without being asked about your criminal background or outstanding warrants.

And here are three pictures I took yesterday morning of the sidewalk/alley just across the street from the sign.

If Missoula was on trial for being retarded, I might be tempted to rest my case, but later this morning Brandon Bryant will finally get to make a court appearance from jail after an extra day in a cell because all the retarded bureaucrats had a holiday yesterday.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned, I have a feeling this is gonna be a big week.