Month: June 2026

I’m writing about the hacker collective known as “Anonymous” today because someone calling herself “Annie Oakley” shared a video on her Facebook page. Apparently, according to the video, a homeless couple in Missoula were treated unfairly by local law enforcement and the video footage, which is NOT shown in the 7 minute clip below, has grabbed the attention of these masked internet trolls turned activist wannabes.

On the unofficial victim-scale that assigns outrage-value for the broader public, a homeless woman getting roughed up by cops and unintentionally showing thong in the process is a sexier sell for outrage clicks than a woman COP initiating a lethal confrontation with a male schizophrenic.

For those with a sense of history, like knowing how the real Annie Oakley tried getting the U.S. Government to allow women to go full-combat with the men, this video getting promoted by an Annie Oakley impersonator is pretty ironic.

Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898, “offering the government the services of a company of 50 ‘lady sharpshooters’ who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain.”

The Spanish–American War did occur, but Oakley’s offer was not accepted. Theodore Roosevelt, did, however, name his volunteer cavalry the “Rough Riders” after the “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World,” of which Oakley was a major star.

While the historic Annie Oakley wanted lady sharpshooters to kill Spaniards for Uncle Sam, the historic origins of “Anonymous” can be traced by consulting materials from people who do actual research beyond YouTube videos and write actual books about it.

Since I have this book in my library I grabbed it and started flipping around. The author, Gabriella Coleman, makes an interesting contact, who she opens her book with and, after exchanging pleasantries on the previous page, I found this exchange with “Dirk Diggler” (later identified as “Weev”) and “biella” (Coleman) to be very interesting for reasons I’m not going to fully get into right now.

Who is Weev? Great question. Maybe his Wikipedia can help.

Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer born 1985), best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and professional Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, he has been described as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist. He has used many aliases when he has contacted the media, but most sources state that his real first name is Andrew.

…

In 2016, Auernheimer was responsible for sending thousands of white-supremacist flyers to unsecured web-connected printers at multiple universities and other locations in the U.S. Since his release from prison, he has lived in several countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In 2016, he told an interviewer that he was living in Kharkiv. In 2017, it was reported that he was acting as webmaster for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as “a neo-Nazi white supremacist” known for “extremely violent rhetoric advocating genocide of non-whites”.

Putting aside what I now know about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s national role and curious relationship with the Montana Human Rights Network, Weev still doesn’t sound like the kind of dude a left leaning person on Facebook, spamming anti-Data Center slop to her “friends”, would support if she, you know, actually knew about history and could think critically about the content that floods the outrage-market.

Speaking of markets, the “justice” market has an amazing mechanism of putting legal moves, like filing an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court, into the “cost-prohibitive” category for a broke, pro se lawyer NOT getting paid to defend his ability to do citizen journalism, which also doesn’t pay well.

What does that mean?

It means the Fourth Judicial District Court, in Missoula, does what I imagine ALL courts do, and that’s contract with a third-party court-recorder to officially document court proceedings. For a 100 page transcript, that works out to $355 dollars.

If anyone has a “hack” around this absurd cost, drop a comment below. Otherwise, that’s it for today’s post (time to put my lawyer hat on).

Thanks for reading!

Today, at 9am, Missoula’s City Council will be viewing the final draft of the “strategic plan” for 2026-2030. To better understand Missoula’s strategic plan, let’s start with the “mission” and “vision” from this 8 page document:

Though PR language is inherently aspirational, the disparity between PR and current reality makes this “vision” and “mission” sound delusional. If I had to re-write REAL versions of these statements, it would go something like this:

Missoula is a two-faced, elitist, and disingenuous community where new transplants with money can live curated lives supported by a mono-party government and incestuous community partnerships in a city offering cost-prohibitive recreation, alcohol/drug culture, and grifter opportunities.

The City of Missoula enhances elitism and quality of life for the privileged caste through an increasingly expensive delivery of services, prioritized stewardship of public resources for the politically deserving, and a commitment to promoting the illusion of social, environmental, and economic resilience.

The first “pillar” of this plan focuses on “thriving people and neighborhoods”, but for today’s post it’s pillar 2 I’m interested in examining.

Thanks to the pernicious and expanding use of Tax Increment Financing hobbling the General Fund through the shell game of diverting money to Urban Renewal Districts and Targeted Economic Development Districts, the need to deliver a “timely and effective public safety response” leads to rising property taxes, and when taxes rise at a higher rate than wages, people struggle to cover the basic costs of living, and when people struggle to cover the basic costs of living, it impacts their overall feeling of safety, and decreased levels of feeling safe can lead to coping with substances, like drugs and alcohol, and coping with drugs and alcohol leads to all kinds of bad outcomes, like car crashes and burning your house down because you passed out with a lit cigarette in your hand.

Then we arrive at Goal 2.3, which is the goal to “strengthen behavioral health prevention, crisis response, and community stabilization“.

Exhibit A for Missoula’s failure on this front is the violent death of Ross Robertson, which I gave my first impression of on Sunday. After writing that post I found a case online that provides more context on Ross Robertson’s long struggle with mental health and Montana’s completely deplorable and dangerously broken mental health system.

A year ago, after a big chunk of money got directed by state legislators to improve Montana’s mental health system, the Montana Free Press covered the legislating, including one bill that included a provision that the State Hospital NOT get charged with contempt by local county attorney’s for refusing patients a bed if it wasn’t available. I think that’s a pretty good indicator of how fucked things have been in Montana.

During an April 15 hearing on Senate Bill 429 to revise criminal commitment procedures, Chad Parker, a state health department attorney, described the measure as “a very robustly negotiated bill.” Nanette Gilbertson, representing the Montana County Attorneys’ Association and the Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, said it contained elements “that I know were tough pills to swallow for both the associations I work for and the department.”

The bill would allow involuntary medication of defendants in county jails under certain circumstances — an idea state officials initially opposed — and prohibit the filing of a contempt charge if someone isn’t admitted to the Montana State Hospital for treatment because a bed isn’t available, which was important to the state to include.

From my time working at the Poverello Center (2008-2016) I can say that the Montana State Hospital is one of the biggest, most dangerous offenders when it comes to negatively impacting Montana’s overall safety as it relates to mental illness.

There were times working at the Poverello Center when we had to vehemently deny someone getting a direct discharge to the shelter from Warm Springs, where the state hospital is located. Then, to our immense frustration, they would show up anyway, usually after getting kicked out of the motel room that the hospital had set them up in.

County Attorney’s, Sheriffs, and everyone else in the criminal justice system across Montana cannot be the people to expect honest assessments from because they are huge parts of the problem. Law enforcement tend to exploit tragedies, like the Anaconda shooting at The Owl Bar that left 4 people dead last year, in order to get more funding and toys to track and trace the public, while County Attorneys default move with things that they control, like information, is to hide whatever they can from the public.

When a probation officer’s name I remembered from my shelter days, Abby Gruber, came up during Ross Robertson’s Coroner’s Inquest, I decided to call her up yesterday and we had a nice little catch-up chat. Beyond the general chat, nothing specific to the case could be shared with me (a member of the media) without first going through the Department of Corrections media contact person in Helena, so it was a quick call with Abby because I already knew that the official path would ultimately lead to the CCJI roadblock (Confidential Criminal Justice Information).

At least I can say, from my direct work experience, that Abby Gruber is one of the people still working inside the system that, in my opinion, deserves the recognition she received recently.

While most within in the system know that more capacity, on multiple fronts, is desperately needed, the future forecast for where to place that capacity is predictably NIMBY:

To understand the controversy surrounding locating a psychiatric hospital in Laurel, city officials have heard hours and hours of testimony objecting to the concept — even though nothing formal has been proposed and it’s nearly impossible to find a single public official willing to offer opinions on the record.

Part of that is because nothing has been formally proposed to the Laurel City Council — and on advice of the city’s attorney, the eight council members have remained silent because if and when a proposal is submitted to build the 32-bed facility there, those council members will decide whether to accept the annexation not (currently the land is in the county).

For years, the Montana State Hospital has been over capacity, forcing the state to do something about just having 53 psychiatric beds for criminal justice holds in a state of 1.2 million.

What spurred on a flood of negative comments and rallied the community was notice of the state entering a buy-sell agreement for 114 acres at the western edge of town, along Old U.S. Highway 10.

Did you catch the two numbers that GLARINGLY stand out from this quote?

In case the numbers snuck by you, allow me to repeat, for emphasis, that Montana has ONLY 53 psychiatric beds for a statewide population of 1.2 million people.

That, dear readers, is what’s truly insane, and it’s why local city leaders will always scapegoat the state when it comes to addressing the real problems we’re facing.

Thanks for reading!

First, congratulations to Missoula police for taking Todd Keith Spence into custody without killing him. Despite Spence articulating his interest in seeing bullets put inside the heads of cops during past interactions, I’m glad to see that cops weren’t so terrified of Todd Keith Spence that they felt the need to tackle him, punch him in the head, shoot him with a taser, then wrap him up to die in a field like they did to Ross Robertson.

On June 5, 2026, at approximately 1:55 a.m., a Missoula Police Department Officer was conducting an extra patrol on the north side of the California Street Foot Bridge. As the officer exited his patrol vehicle, he smelled smoke from what he believed was a campfire. The officer followed the smell and walked down to the river.

The officer observed two males, one of whom was seated by the burning embers, and the other was standing over the fire. The officer told them that it was illegal to have a fire within the Missoula city limits. The male who was standing became hostile and aggressive and began yelling at the officer. The male said something to the effect of, get that flashlight out of my face a**hole and then told him to leave him alone. The officer told the male, who was later identified as Todd Spence, that it was dark and the flashlight was necessary to see.

After explaining the function of flashlights to this violent, drug-abusing sex offender, the cop decided to use his “phone a friend” option to get another cop on-scene. Instead of showing up and immediately tackling Spence, they all just kept chatting like pals.

Spence continued to yell and flipped the officer the bird. Due to his elevated behavior, the officer radioed dispatch and requested that another officer respond to his location. Another officer then arrived on-scene and Spence continued to yell and use obscenities directed at them.

The officer gave Spence several chances to identify himself, but he refused to comply. Officers then secured Spence’s arms and placed him in handcuffs. After escorting Spence to a patrol vehicle, the officer conducted a search incident to arrest. In an inside pocket of Spence’s jacket, the officer found a white and clear soft plastic zip bag. The officer observed several syringes, a pill, a multicolored ceramic smoking pipe, and a meth pipe.

After the search was complete, an officer transported Spence to the Missoula County Detention Facility, where Spence continued to be extremely hostile and aggressive toward jail staff. Once there, the clear plastic zip bag was opened by jail staff. They told the officer that they found three methamphetamine glass pipes, a marijuana pipe, several syringes, and a gabapentin pill.

Three years ago Todd Keith Spence wanted to kill cops, but for some reason his stated desire didn’t really amount to any significant time in jail. Why the fuck not?

On May 9, 2023, a Missoula Police Department Officer responded to the area of Silver Park to assist another officer with a male suspect who had an outstanding warrant. When the officer arrived, he noticed the other officer had handcuffed the male who was later identified as 48-year-old Todd Spence.

The officer also observed a tent nearby that was occupied. While the officer attempted to make contact with the occupant of the tent, Spence became extremely agitated and began yelling at him. The officers secured Spence in the backseat of a patrol vehicle and then conversed with the occupant of the tent.

While in the patrol vehicle, Spence began kicking the cage and door and continued to escalate despite the officer’s warnings to stop. Spence continually told the officer that his arrest was unlawful and the warrant was “bulls**t,” and that his rights were being violated.

The officer explained to Spence that a judge was available to see him on his warrant and transported him to jail. According to court documents, Spence became very agitated about going to jail instead of going to see the judge and stated, “I’m going to put a bullet in your head.”

Despite LOTS of 911 calls, criminal charges, and over a dozen locations around town that have trespassed him, why is Todd Keith Spence repeatedly put back on the streets to threaten EVERYONE around him? It makes no sense.

To see the most recent breakdown of Spence’s criminal history, here’s how the latest KGVO article concludes:

Spence has two prior convictions for possession of dangerous drugs in the past two years. He was also convicted on the obstructing charges that accompanied both of the prior drug cases.

According to court documents, Spence’s substance abuse issues persist, which correspond with his continued, often aggressive, behavior that poses a risk to the community.

Spence has been permanently trespassed from over a dozen locations in Missoula, has a combined eight pending cases in Missoula Municipal and Justice courts, and, since the beginning of 2026 alone, 911 Dispatch has received at least 15 calls for service involving Spence.

The State requested an arrest warrant in the amount of $10,000.

Spence’s latest arrest occurred across from Silver Park, where my kid had his graduation party on Sunday. When I biked around the area with my daughter that day, it was right near the location where Spence was living illegally. If anything ever happened because a piece of shit like Todd Spence continues to somehow be coddled with kid gloves by this idiotic fucking town, I know which community culprit I’ll be looking at for answers.

Since I’m good at finding little tells from those in positions of local power about how they see the system they work inside of, I already know how Matt Jennings is forming his answer about “repeat offenders” and WHY his powerful County Attorney’s office appears so helpless to stop them.

The Matt Jennings quote I’ll be using is ostensibly about DUIs, but can be applied to the general manner in which trials are conducted, which I will explain in a moment. First, this:

The nature of a trial (which I learned the hard way), especially from the vantage point of the defense team (if you have one), is to limit whatever you can from the jury and/or judge as they narrowly consider your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the specific charges. That’s the game, and Matt Jennings is using his KGVO media megaphone to say he feels like the game is skewed against his prosecution team because serial DUI offenders cannot be portrayed as serial DUI offenders.

The game outside the courtroom is called the court of public opinion, so what Matt Jennings is doing is simply following literal pages from the Kirsten Pabst playbook, a playbook I tracked down so I could have physical ownership of the pages Matt Jennings continues to operationalize:

Beyond KGVO appearances and press releases, Missoula County is fighting a serious information war behind the scenes AGAINST the media, both conventional and unconventional ones, like me, who find documents about Todd Keith Spence online in order to post and publicly call out the failing cogs in the system, like Probation and Parole.

For additional information on the anecdotal conundrum of Todd K. Spence vs. Missoula, and Kirsten Pabst’s prosecutorial enforcement of The Law, here’s some posts to click on:

“An Open Letter To Sheriff T.J. McDermott, County Attorney Kirsten Pabst, And Police Chief Jaeson White” (September 9th, 2022)

“Unpacking The September 8th Assault On Montana Transportation Staff By A Homeless Sex Offender” (September 11th, 2022)

“The Deplorable Legacy Of Missoula County Attorney, Kirsten Pabst” (October 3rd, 2022)

“Deplorable Pabst Legacy Round 2: Failing Up” (October 4th, 2022)

“On Defending Yourself In A World Where Sad Prosecutors Write Books Instead Of Keeping Their Communities Safe” (February 10th, 2023)

“AA#7-The Meth Den Clean-Up That Synchronistically Culminated With A Press Conference On Homeless Camps” (April 27th, 2023)

“Saving The Homeless Sex Offender From The Clark Fork River” (May 4th, 2023)

“Missoula County Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen, Has Some Explaining To Do” (May 11th, 2023)

“If I Had The Resources To Do Actual, In Depth Investigations…” (July 17th, 2023)

“Did You Know Missoula Narrative Controllers Have A History Of Hating Bloggers?” (February 12th, 2025)

There you go, dear readers, ten posts over the last four years that gives you, for free, context on a criminal injustice conundrum I’ve been perplexed by since the homeless camp cleanup assaults. Maybe someday I’ll have a better explanation (besides my “Angel of Death” theory) to explain the bizarre leniency on this dangerous, drug-addicted individual.

Thanks for reading!

Hey Americans who keep voting like your votes matter, have you ever considered that perhaps YOU are the problem?

This week you’ll be hearing a lot about poor Spencer Pratt and the weird mail-in-vote surge that suddenly erased his second place finish, essentially ending his campaign against the fire-enabling insanity of liberal policies that have turned more and more of LA into an open-air homeless drug market.

Playing a rigged game, then complaining about rigged results, is getting REALLY old. Despite all that tiny hat money removing Massie, I guess it’s still shocking to some LA voters that funny AI ads and much-needed criticism of the Homeless Industrial Complex can’t beat decades of established electoral tricks.

To see how the major media outlets in LA will depict the retarded expectations of Pratt voters as being dumb and wrong, here’s the Los Angeles Times explaining to voters how their inability to track confusing media electoral updates led to the wild expectations of electoral success now crashing to the ground of supposed reality:

Since election night in California, a single theory of election fraud has taken root like no other among online conspiracy theorists, bot accounts, conservative influencers and people close to President Trump. It proved to be a simple misreading of the voting data.

Late on election night, an update of vote counts in the Los Angeles mayor’s race appeared on election results pages of various media outlets including the Los Angeles Times. It showed leading Democrats Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman receiving tens of thousands of new votes, and leading Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt receiving no new votes.

Some observers of the vote tally immediately took screenshots, with some shouting fraud. Others ran statistical analyses that showed it would be impossible for a candidate such as Pratt — running second in the race — to receive zero votes in such a large batch of ballots.

The problem? Just a few moments later, according to the LA Times, this happened:

In fact, the update that showed zero Pratt votes was followed one minute later by another update that showed tens of thousands of votes for Pratt, and none for Bass or Raman.

There was no batch of votes that included zero votes for any candidate, as Los Angeles County’s own data show plainly.

But the claim fit into the broader, false narrative being pushed relentlessly by Trump and other Republicans in recent days, that California Democrats were cheating.

If you’re STILL not understanding how this “misreading of data” between votes cast, and media reports reporting, fueled conspiracy theories, the LA Times has an academic expert to provide more condescending context about this “simple mix-up”:

Justin Grimmer, a political science professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who researches and evaluates claims of election fraud, conducted his own data analysis of the vote updates, and came to the same conclusion.

He said there was an initial update with no Pratt votes, but a second one 41 seconds later with no votes for Bass or Raman — leading him to believe the single batch of ballots was just reported in two back-to-back updates rather than one.

“Because they came so close together, it looks like it was just a sequence of updates,” he said.

Grimmer said news outlets are “thinking about speed” and the best way to get people the most accurate information as quickly as possible, but “haven’t quite adjusted to being in this world where there’s this group of people who monitor these data feeds as if they are official government reports.”

“It leads to these horrible tweets about there being evidence of fraud,” he said.

Does THAT satisfy your sense of outrage you silly Spencer Pratt voters?

While legacy media in LA does damage control over their sloppy coverage of the Los Angeles Mayoral race, local media in Missoula continue to show how very effective they are at NOT reporting on certain developments impacting Missoula’s version of the Homeless Industrial Complex, like a book author with “lived experience” coming to Missoula to offer something called a SOLUTION to the intractable problem our local leaders get paid to not fix.

Before getting to wear a cap and gown (like my oldest kid wore on Saturday), Ginny Burton was doing hard drugs and committing felonies. Then, thanks to a stint in jail, Ginny turned things around. By 2022 she was making appearances with big media figures, like Tucker Carlson.

Did ANYONE in local media cover Ginny Burton’s appearance in Missoula? Nope. Nor did any local official find the time to come and listen to what she had to say, which can be summarized by the main points of her 10-point “Gabriel Plan”:

While Ginny Burton beat a mean meth addiction and wrote a book that could be applied to systemic retardation, Missoula liberals are more prone to embrace Stephanie Land’s story, the former homeless woman who translated her poor choice of male partner into a very popular book and Netflix movie after getting “educated” in Missoula on how to participate in an astro-turfed outrage campaign against a much-needed municipal move to curb “urban camping”.

To get a sense of how eagerly Land’s story was jumped on and turned into a mass-published narrative and Netflix flick, here’s a Seattle Times article from around the same time Burton was appearing on Fox News:

Land’s story unfolds in a Pacific Northwest landscape. That homeless shelter (and subsequent transitional housing) was in Port Townsend; the tiny, mildewed studio apartment she later shared with her daughter was in Mount Vernon; the city to which she and Mia eventually moved was Missoula, Montana, where Land slowly worked her way through college in her 30s — and finally realized her longtime dream of becoming a writer. (She’ll be in Seattle on Monday, Feb. 11, for a Q&A and book signing at Elliott Bay Book Company.)

“Maid” was born as a college essay called “Confessions of the Housekeeper,” but quickly it grew. “I sent a pitch to (the online magazine) Vox that wasn’t really a pitch, it was more like, Dear Editor, I wrote this in college, maybe you might like it,” recalled Land, in a telephone interview this month from her Missoula home.

She sent two paragraphs from the essay, describing her experiences cleaning for an early client: the Sad House, the home of a frail widower “dying slowly in a shrine that hadn’t changed since his wife had passed away.” In “Maid,” Land writes that before the Sad House, she’d thought of cleaning as “a mindless job and something to pay my bills, but now it felt like the work had an unexpected imprint on my life, and the vulnerability I was exposed to somehow relieved me of my own.”

Vox’s response was quick: “They emailed back almost immediately, offering me $500 — a huge amount of money, the most money I thought I was ever going to make,” said Land. The resulting story was published on Vox in July 2015.

Going back to Pratt, there will now be more endless cycles of clipped social media outrage expressing dismay that he was electorally robbed, and demanding investigations, and blah blah blah…but why should anyone OUTSIDE of Los Angeles really give a shit about any of this?

Yesterday I published my first impression of the Coroner’s Inquest for Ross Robertson. Besides a Missoulian article inaccessible to the non-paying public, no other media reported on the very troubling scenario of a man in a mental health crisis getting snuffed out by local law enforcement.

It shouldn’t be the job of unpaid locals and volunteers to fill the void left by failed politicians and complicit non-profit “leaders” to address the systemic issues plaguing our community, but that’s the reality that vote-casting hopefuls are continuing to ignore because it would mean doing something more significant than filling in bubbles on a ballot every other year.

To those who aren’t waiting for election results to take action in your own community, thank you. The audiences might not be noteworthy yet to local narrative controllers, but that doesn’t mean something significant isn’t happening.

Thanks for reading!

Let’s call this a “first impression” post about the Ross Robertson episode of Montana’s routine judicial performance clearing Missoula law enforcement of killing people, known to those of us watching these performative episodes as THE CORONER’S INQUEST.

Like so many of the scripted performances that make up this genre, the result of this one was already a foregone conclusion. Why? Because “criminal means” is an impossibly high legal bar to meet, and County Attorney’s, like Matt Jennings, would essentially be ending their political/legal careers were they to ever seriously attempt to clear that legal bar against a sworn officer of the law.

Luckily, after telling the courtroom on Friday that he knows better to ask a lady cop how much she weighs, I think Missoula’s lead County Attorney, Matt Jennings, may have a shot at being a stand-up comedian were he to ever find himself in need of a career change.

How much does the FEMALE police officer, Makenzie Ranger, weigh?

That’s the question Matt Jennings didn’t ask on Friday. Instead, he turned that unasked question into a joke in order to elicit an answer to that exact same question from the MALE police officer, Joshua Mirabella, who I can say weighs 170 lbs. Here’s why the question of weight matters.

Makenzie Ranger, in sworn testimony from the stand, stated several times that she was afraid of being physically hurt by the MUCH LARGER suspect that she pursued BY HERSELF into a desolate field after responding to an unattended fire at a trailer park.

Ross Robertson, the jury was later told, weighed 275 lbs, which made him an imposing and OBESE adversary when his refusal to cooperate turned physical. Also, his heart was fat–a fact later focused on by Walter Kemp, the Medical Examiner who was brought in by Missoula County to provide his professional opinion on an autopsy that he, himself, didn’t actually perform.

Maybe (the argument goes) if Ross Robertson wasn’t a big fatty with a 520 gram heart (normal dude hearts weigh between 250-350 grams) he would have been able to survive the tackle to the ground, the punches to the head, the taser shots, the spit-hood, and the body wrap that DCI investigator, Edward Thomas “Tommy” Teniente, testified he was, previous to this Coroner’s Inquest, totally unfamiliar with.

Are these wraps really that new to you, Tommy? Because, after a one minute search online, I found the above link about The Wrap and growing concerns about its use.

After 25 years on the market, more than 10,000 WRAPs are in use across the United States and Canada, according to the manufacturer, Safe Restraints. Institutions that use the restraint include police departments, juvenile facilities, hospitals, stadiums and parks, said Charles Hammond, the company’s president and CEO.

Safe Restraints markets the WRAP as “​​proven to save lives.” However, an investigation by Capital & Main has found that the company’s safety claims are mainly based on anecdotes and a study whose author disputes Safe Restraints’ interpretation of his work.

As the device has become more widely used, lawsuits over in-custody deaths and allegations of torture are emerging, a review of public records shows.

So, what was Ross Roberston ultimately guilty of?

Ross Robertson was guilty of not stopping when a scared lady cop of unknown weight told him to stop.

And he was guilty of being physically large, strong, and intimidating when he said “NO” several times while holding the object he died with, which was a Bible.

And he was guilty of screaming and resisting what was being done to him to “keep him safe” as he repeated phrases, like LORD HAVE MERCY, that will haunt my memory of this particular episode of Coroner’s Inquest.

And what are the cops who killed Ross, like Joshua Mirabella, guilty of?

Nothing, because they did their gosh-darned best.

Josh Mirabella did his gosh-darned best when he tried taking the “element of surprise” for a tactical tackle and “bounced off” the obese schizophrenic holding his Bible, then Lucas Big House did his gosh-darned best by joining the scrum and getting the wild beast to the ground. More cops joined in, like Mitch Lang putting his blue-gloved hands on Ross’ spit-hooded head, and when Ross Robertson went limp the FIRST TIME, the idea of using Narcan was suggested and quickly deployed, bringing Ross back momentarily before he finally died in the vacant field.

There is a sick irony entangled with the geographical terrain where this death occurred that I’ll expound on later, since I’ve long argued that Tax Increment Financing negatively impacts publicly-funded first responders, but for now I’ll just ask WHY we fund things like the Mobile Crisis Unit and STILL can’t put something better in place for a man who was getting ACTIVE mental health treatment from Winds of Change before Missoula police killed him.

It was even known, and directly communicated by Ross’ mother, Patti, ON THE DAY HE DIED via a 911 call that Ross was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had been off his medications for a month. Would that information have changed the approach law enforcement took, or was the escalation of PROTECT LADY COP already set into motion?

If you think I’m being unfair about the scenario I’m describing from seeing the available body-cam footage presented during Friday’s Coroner’s Inquest, perhaps I’ll find a way to get the footage that I saw out to the broader public so locals can see for themselves how Missoula PD can kill you for not immediately complying with their demands.

After the jury found NO CRIMINAL MEANS were used on May 29th, 2024, by local law enforcement regarding how they killed Ross Robertson in a vacant field behind the mall, shouldn’t the public get a chance to see what a well-trained police force can do to YOU or YOUR LOVED ONE if they start acting crazy with some fire and a Bible?

To officially access the information Missoula County is spending tax dollars officially withholding from out-of-state media companies, here’s a screenshot of the online process:

If CCJI is a giant dam holding back stories of Montana’s criminal injustice system from public view, then the vigorous defense coming especially from Missoula County could be evidence that too many cracks in that dam are now spider-webbing from the building pressure, and something is about to give.

THAT is the story I hope to be writing about soon, so stay tuned!

And, as always, thanks for reading.