by Travis Mateer
First, let me correct the mistaken reporting I did last week about a shooting I ascribed an inaccurate location for. Instead of a downtown shooting, like the one I was thinking that happened last fall, the recent gun activity occurred on the Southside of town, near the park that big concert was supposed to happen at.
This was part of TWO identified incidents with guns related to gang activity that has recently occurred, earning a VERY STERN warning from the Missoula County Attorney’s Office.
“Recently we have had a disturbing trend here in Missoula where we’ve seen some juvenile gang violence popping up,” Jennings said. “Last weekend we had a gang-involved shooting and then a couple days ago we had another firearm-related incident involving rival gang members at a grocery store. The police force here in Missoula is really skilled, they’re really ambitious, they have some great expertise, and they’re tackling this problem on the front end to make sure that things don’t get out of control.”
The gang with the monopoly on using state violence (because their badges shield them from accountability) is the gang Matt Jennings relies on to do his job, so obviously he’s going to use their threat of violence to put THE FEAR into the minds of these wayward youth who are “disturbing” local officials with their use of firearms.
Here’s more of the threat being issued from the County Attorney’s Office (emphasis mine):
“If we see someone who is involved in a gang or gang violence, there is going to be a 0 tolerance policy between our office prosecuting them and the Police Department making sure that they do apprehend them,” Jennings said. “We’re going to use all the tools necessary to make sure the community is protected in those circumstances. I hope that with that cooperation, we can snuff this out before we see some of the problems in Billings or larger urban areas that people may associate with gangs a little bit more. But sadly this is a real problem here and it’s something that we’re going to be watching pretty closely.”
When Jennings says ALL the tools what is he talking about? Is he talking about the alleged deterrent of jail and prison? And, if he is, what happens if those tools aren’t the deterrents we, as a society, think they are? What if jail and prisons are GREAT places for young gang members to network? What if CARTELS have significant influence INSIDE jails? What then?
One of the main tools our entire judicial system operates on is FEAR, and that fear, when used on both formal and informal informants, can lead to VERY bad outcomes. Just ask the family of Colton Peterson, who had to watch their young son spiral into the zero-sum, leverage-based system Matt Jennings now greatly influences:
Peterson’s family concedes a succession of poor decisions on his part, but they say Missoula police, who knew of his suicidal tendencies, also bear responsibility. There’s no better argument for mandatory crisis intervention training for law enforcement, they say, than the way their son’s case played out.
In quick succession in the week before his death, Peterson was assaulted by two men after reportedly brandishing a gun to collect a drug debt, was busted for growing pot, recruited as a confidential informant, and pressured to provide a list of other growers’ names by 5 p.m. on July 27.
He didn’t make the deadline.
At about 3:30 p.m., he shot himself.
Like I mentioned in last week’s post, I now consider badges to be a very troubling competitor gang for the organized elements running black market revenue streams in our region. With attention suddenly thrust upon FED-market revenue streams, I’ll remind readers that the program Project Safe Neighborhoods (lots of links in that post) has long been of interest to me, since it put the United Way in bed with the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office to fight meth.
Maybe it’s a matter of semantics, but wouldn’t FED money be considered a TOOL in the financial tool belt? That’s a question I would like to ask ALL the local media platforms that have enabled the falsehood, peddled constantly by Missoula’s shadow Mayor, Ellen Buchanan, that their ONLY tool to get things done around town is the TIF tool.
For evidence that this falsehood continues to have media-legs, here’s my reporting from five days ago where I quoted Ellen Buchanan saying this (emphasis still mine):
At city council this week, Missoula Redevelopment Agency director Ellen Buchanan raised similar concerns.
“I think it’s safe to say that SB 2 would literally be the death knell for tax-increment financing use in the state of Montana,” Buchanan said. “And it’s the only economic development tool we really have.”
My geographic inaccuracy, quickly acknowledged, pales in comparison to this load of shit Ellen shovels every chance she gets.
Other tools beyond the John Ashcroft-inspired FED money include MILLS and LEVIES, which I’ve ALSO criticized. In fact, in 2022 (the last year I was allowed on the radio airwaves of KGVO), I’d like to think my appearance on KGVO helped confirm the sneaking suspicion citizens were ALREADY having about how the three-horned orgy of non-profit/government/private sector money was being used. When the “crisis” levy failed at the ballot box, it was our local “leaders” who suddenly felt the pangs off financial fear descend, strengthening the disdain some people in this valley already had for me.
Amidst lost elections and a failed attempt to stop meth colonies from proliferating in public parks, the Lee Enterprises rag recent highlighted TWO SOCIALISTS on City Council talking about how popular their policy platforms are.
Huh?
City Councilors Daniel Carlino and Kristen Jordan told the audience of about 50 people that city policies are becoming more conservative, citing recent laws around homelessness and urban camping, and explained why they’ve been pushing for more democratic socialist policies.
“Socialist polices are super popular,” Carlino said at the Missoula Elks Lodge last Thursday. “Perhaps the ‘s’ word itself is not popular, but I think the policies themselves are super popular, especially in Missoula.”
If you’d like to REALLY see the bias of the corporation complaining about a recent cyber-security event, check out this post of mine about how the Missoulian covered the concept of “tactical civics”. Regarding the event that disrupted receivers of Lee Enterprises narrative control propaganda, here’s the news about news delivery I suspect most of my readers didn’t even know about:
A ‘cybersecurity event’ has disrupted many of the systems and networks this week at Lee Enterprises, the parent company of the Missoulian and dozens of other newspapers, the company’s CEO confirmed Friday night.
“We are now focused on determining what information — if any — may have been affected by the situation,” CEO Kevin Mowbray said in an email to company employees. “We are working to complete this investigation as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
“We have notified law enforcement of the situation.”
Mowbray said he could not speculate on details because the incident is under investigation “and we will not be able to share information that could compromise our investigation or any investigation by law enforcement.”
Sure, Kevin, I’m sure the gang with badges will be helpful in this situation. And if that doesn’t work, maybe the post-Skiggy era editors at Lee can scapegoat the terrible tech-bro fascists somehow.
If you’d like to support Missoula’s favorite scapegoat, then Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) still has room for your digital donation. Every little bit helps (thanks Warren!).
And thanks for reading!
