by Travis Mateer
It’s painful to watch what Montana Republicans are doing with their political power right now, but I fully expected it. After trying to get these idiots to understand Tax Increment Financing’s role in exacerbating the property tax driven housing crisis during the last legislative session, I can personally attest that the supposed conservative ideal of fiscal conservatism is as real in Helena as a Unicorn.
Just because little girls believe in Unicorns that doesn’t make them real. Similarly, just because Montana Republicans believe America’s crisis exists almost solely in bathrooms and transgender-pushing doctor’s offices, that doesn’t mean it’s true. But just try and get these twats to care about anything else and see how successful you are.
Am I being a smidgen unfair?
It IS true that other things are happening, like pretending to address the MMIP crisis with money, and this is getting some national attention thanks to the spotlight seeking behavior of a shitty and/or corrupt Detective known locally as GAY BIKER. Detective Baker was recently eating up some attention at the Roxy in Missoula over the unsolved case of a Native women who really knew how to apply her makeup, according to the chaplain of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, Lowell Hochhalter.
I’m of course talking about Jermain Charlo, and I’m not the only one. After the 48 Hours tv attention, which Gay Biker is expertly milking, all those women who comprise a healthy percentage of the lucrative TRUE CRIME market are ALSO talking about Jermain Charlo.
The panel consisted of family members, investigators, and 48 Hours producer, Stephen McCain.
“We have been looking to do an MMIW story for years,” McCain said.
The group shared updates on the case with Detective Guy Baker telling the crowd that when the program originally aired, it led to several leads.
The special was released in October, but the family believes its continued exposure could lead to a break in the case.
Would it be helpful to share some of my own qualitative data from the field tests I’ve done recently with my Lego Detectives at local watering holes? Ok then.
What initially appears to be a ruse in order for a divorced man to talk to women in a bar setting quickly turns into valuable data about which Lego Detective figure they think will SOLVE THE CASE in my Lego world, the stern brunette or smiling blonde. What kind of case, I’m sometimes asked, then I mention Jermain’s name and almost everyone I’ve talked to knows exactly who I’m talking about.
Before the Sean Stevenson case and what happened to Johnny Lee Perry, and before the “accidental deaths” of Rebekah Barsotti, and Joey Thompson, and I’m sure Eva Prather, and that 22 year old woman found dead in the woods, I had more respect for what law enforcement was dealing with when it came to the overlapping worlds of illicit drugs and homelessness, but it’s hard to remind myself of all the good cops I interacted with when working at the shelter as more and more evidence comes my way of serious badge complicity in some seriously bad shit.
Take this seemingly dumb asshole with a badge from Mineral County as an example of what badges in Big Sky Country think they can do because, well, who is going to stop them? Sheriff fucking Funke? Austin I WANNA BE GOVERNOR Knudsen? Yeah, right.
Thanks to Reddit and technology, we get to see how Eric assumes he can roll in Missoula at local drinking establishments. And, thanks to the courage that comes with anonymity, the birdies on Reddit get wonderfully specific about the quality of character employed by our western neighbors in Mineral County.
For more official context, here’s Monte Turner reporting on the hiring of Lindauer in 2021 (emphasis mine):
Eric Lindauer is the most recent deputy that has been hired for Mineral County and he has a running start.
“I think a strong advantage that I have is that I know the ins and outs of the jail procedures as well as working side by side with dispatch for a year. I think that will help me immensely in the field,” he said.
Lindauer has worked as a county detention Officer and already knows the staff, equipment and procedures inside the sheriff’s office.
Now as a deputy, he’ll be the complete deal.
Hilarious.
Before I came to understand how seriously MISSOULA police take non-functioning headlights and Cannabis impairment, I hoped the badge problems in Big Sky Country were more policy-based than people, but I’ve really had to up my expectation of interlocking fuckery afoot, especially after experiencing a trial where the chief prosecutor for the city blatantly lied in her closing statement, not to mention the body-camera footage clearly showing my arresting officer muting his audio after the other cop asked about a stalking charge they were trying to cook up against me at the time, which never materialized (footage my Public Defender never showed the jury).
All this said, the benefit of having truth on one’s side is that it does figuratively enlarge one’s gonads, which is physiologically defined, if you didn’t know, as the organ the produces gametes, which appears to include both testis AND ovaries, so INCLUSIVE!
Being inclusive is important, since I think all kinds of people are at risk with this corrupt local power structure willing and capable of exerting impressive resources when its grip on narrative control is threatened, and that’s precisely what I’ve been doing, in a variety of ways, since I pushed send on the email at Missoula Aging Services on the exact day Sean Stevenson was allegedly assaulted by, according to the official story, just one man in a miraculous rear-naked chokehold that produced impossible bruising all over Sean’s lifeless body.
Now that I’m free from the expectation that this Cartoon Clown World functions the way the bedtime stories tell us it’s supposed to, I’m free to create my own world, which is what any writer does, but I’m not sure many writers use an interlocking plastic brick system to provide such a wondrous backdrop to their “fictional” lore.
If you appreciate all this content, and if you have NEVER donated before, now would be a GREAT time, since I wasn’t able to upload a video that this still image above is taken from, and that’s probably, I’m assuming, because my Vimeo bill is due soon, so if you have funds to send my way, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to do it.
Thanks for reading!