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 Or, more likely, is he too busy running away from the Missoula County Courthouse to think about outdated models of dealing with serious mental illness and very destructive drug addiction issues?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!