I can easily foresee a near-future where encampments like the exaggerated scene above exist, festering in toxic sludge as “campers” administer chemical lobotomies to themselves. If what’s being depicted in this scene is not desirable, then maybe it’s worth determining WHY the marginally less disgusting encampment near the Buckhouse bridge has been allowed to exist since last October.
I know contact with campers at this site first began in October because a nice woman at the Missoula County Health Department read me out the notes over the phone after finding the complaint filed under “solid waste”. Two private landowners–Buckhouse Shoptown LLC and the University of Montana–were identified and notified, then, at some point, law enforcement made contact.
What happened next?
Nothing. Fall became winter, winter became spring, and now, seasonal snowmelt will be swelling the rivers soon. While legal responsibility to clean up this mess and foot the bill lands on the landowners, the legal question of WHO was essentially trespassing, and WHY they weren’t evicted sooner, remains.
Since the County notes didn’t specific who was living at the encampment, I biked out to the bridge again (before my bike was stolen Friday night) to see what else I could find. What I found was pretty interesting.
Before the felony burglary charge in Cascade County, Justin Julian was hanging out with a shitty mom who got arrested for driving around a youth gang to steal shit. Justin Julian was just 18 year old at the time.
A 37-year-old Great Falls woman is accused of driving her son and his friends around the city as the teens stole items from cars.
Police learned about the case Saturday morning when the woman’s husband called authorities to report he found a pile of stuff in his back yard that he suspected had been stolen. Court records say over $3,000 in items were stolen, including a set of golf clubs and power tools.
Lisa Dilley is charged with accountability to theft and accountability to criminal trespass to a vehicle, along with endangering the welfare of children.
Two 18-year-olds, Justin Julian and Julie Surratt, also face the accountability charges. Five juveniles were arrested in the case, including Dilley’s 16-year-old son.
This interaction with law enforcement occurred in 2009 and involved several minors. Knowing this background helps put pictures like this into perspective:
When I learned that law enforcement has known about this illegal encampment since last fall, and when I learned the name of one of the campers, Justin Julian, combined with what I wrote last week regarding drug dealing being allegedly done BY law enforcement, the arrest of Justin Julian outside the Poverello Center in March of this year for alleged meth possession is something I find VERY interesting, especially the part about “previous professional contacts”:
On March 17, 2026, a Missoula Police Department Officer was driving behind the Poverello Center and observed 35-year-old Justin Julian, whom the officer was familiar with through previous professional contacts. The officer was further aware that Julian had an active felony arrest warrant.
The officer approached Julian and asked him to identify himself. Julian was placed under arrest and then stated he wanted his bicycle, backpack, and coat to remain in the care of his friend. The officer informed Julian that they would address his property after the arrest process.
Julian was then escorted to the officer’s patrol car. The officer asked Julian if he had anything on his person, such as weapons, needles, or drugs. Julian stated that he had two empty syringes in the right front pocket of his jeans and denied possessing any drugs.
I also find it interesting, though probably just coincidental, that my bike got stolen the same day Justin Julian got out of jail. Since Missoula County no longer allows mugshots to be posted along with criminal charges, I’ll include an image from Facebook instead.
To bolster my assertion that Justin Julian is one of Missoula’s many transient bike thieves who enjoys slamming meth and trashing the river under the noses of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, here are some more images from his urban campsite:
Last Friday I got to see some encouraging before/after pictures of the Reserve Street homeless encampments from the major 2022 cleanup. I took screenshots during the presentation but, without permission from the photographer, I won’t be sharing them. I will share one of the many images I found at the blog, Big Sky Words, and suggest clicking this link for an insightful look at the Reserve Street camps in 2018, when high water caught many campers off guard.
I’ll also share the word of caution I gave the Facebook group rightfully proud of their 2022 achievement at Reserve Street, and that word of caution was, and is, this: think twice before going gung-ho on making educational material, like a book, describing what it took to remove 80 tons of trash from this long-problematic spot along the Clark Fork river because part of that story includes the political opposition that existed at the time, and that opposition hasn’t just disappeared because a non-profit leader is retiring.
One interesting quote I caught from the Big Sky Words post came from that retiring non-profit leader’s favorite Sheriff, T.J. McDermott. I especially like his use of the word “hide”:
Bloggers like Greg Strandberg, who ran Big Sky Words for little-to-no compensation like I’ve been doing for over a decade, have done the kind of work that local narrative controllers DO NOT WANT us to do, and that’s because it preserves evidence of their failure, especially as it relates to controversial topics, like homelessness. This 2018 post is a great example because it preserves a Sheriff McDermott quote I can no longer find by clicking the KPAX link.
One of the posts I’ll be writing this week will be about a pattern of hiding information I’ve seen emerge from local and state authorities recently, particularly as it relates to Confidential Criminal Justice Information (CCJI). In light of this pattern, I’m wondering if scaling back the publishing of mugshots might not be a part of something more ominous forming on the horizon, something like pairing victimhood with the idea of online digital harassment in order to push for mandatory digital IDs.
If you appreciate what you read for free at Zoom Chron, please consider donating to my GoFundMe. With legal attacks mounting, and my tendency to bite the paternal hand feeding me (resulting in new threats of punishment where it hurts me most) now would be a GREAT time to give a REAL citizen journalist some digital dollars.
Thanks for reading!
The problem seems too be that so few people actually go down there and that it goes unnoticed, and thus unaddressed. It seems to me that the solution would be to develop the Buckhouse bridge into a river access point with a parking lot, bathroom, street lights and boat ramp. The increased traffic would make it hard to have a hidden bike chop shop and meth lab.