Some Thoughts On The Unconfirmed Death Of David Barsotti – by Travis Mateer

With unconfirmed reports that David Barsotti was found dead in his home recently in Superior, Montana, I rewatched a handful of “True Crime” content this weekend about his wife, Rebekah Barsotti, who went missing five years ago tomorrow and was found dead 10 months later. Here’s what stood out to me from my brief trip down memory lane where I, and many others, may have been manipulated from the very beginning of Rebekah Barsotti’s “disappearance”.

If David Barsotti murdered his wife, either directly or by paying someone else to do it, then it wasn’t just the prospect of divorce that may have been the catalyst, it was likely the specific impact on the couple’s main asset–their marital home–that made the prospect of divorce so threatening.

After Rebekah’s body was found (but before she was officially identified) Rebekah’s mother, Angela Mastrovito, discussed how this pre-disappearance marital fight was shaping up once Rebekah made up her mind to leave.

After being reminded about how important the house was to David Barsotti I was curious to see what the Montana Cadastral website would show about the property. Here’s a screenshot:

River front property? Hmmm.

Before moving on there are a few data points from Montana Cadastral to parse out, like this one:

The deed alteration due to “Termination of Joint Tenancy by Death” occurred on 8/25/2022, just three months after Rebekah was found dead under VERY suspicious circumstances. Considering how vigorously David Barsotti fought his mother-in-law to control his wife’s corpse after she was found NOT alive, and considering how vigorously Angela Mastrovito fought her son-in-law all the way to the Montana Supreme Court for money to compensate her choice to move to Montana and search for her daughter, it seems notable that David made legally updating his property information a priority.

It’s a possibility, though, that I’m not interpreting this data correctly because something else that seemed notable, like when the information on this property was “Last Modified”…

…only appeared significant (David possibly died BEFORE July 13th) until I ran this by someone else and they noticed the same date/time modification on their own property at this site, indicating a system modification done automatically, not a specific modification done by an individual.

If I was going on a live-stream, like Jim Terry asked me to do yesterday during our brief and repulsive phone conversation, then depicting the deed modification as being done in the wee hours of the night by an unnamed individual plays MUCH better for the eager audience of wine-moms Terry seems to both despise, and rely on, for income, as reported a few years ago by the Rolling Stone.

When I spoke to Jim Terry yesterday, he asked when I heard David had died. I told him Friday, then got some interesting tidbits from him, like his theory that some local cops are trafficking guns to and from Arkansas, but after I turned down his offer to appear on his YouTube channel, or go to David’s house and live-stream some bullshit for him, that’s when the phone line seemed to cut-out and I sensed a ploy to see if I was eager enough to play bullshit games and call back.

I did not call back.

One of the few bright spots in this dark period of my life is that I never played the “True Crime” game that other colorful characters, like Nathan, seemed to play when he pretended to go along with a plan to burn down Angela Mastrovito’s Virginia home.

By staying local and avoiding the trap of the spectacle I kept myself on the periphery as this drama of recorded phone calls and plans to commit arson, or worse, unfolded. Now I’m wondering why Angela Mastrovito’s first Private Investigator, John Baker, proposed the idea of ensnaring David Barsotti in the pre-planning stage of this arson conspiracy plot in the first place.

Could there have been an attempt to muddy the waters from the get-go?

I called John Baker’s PI office yesterday and left a message, so maybe I’ll get a chance to ask directly about the methods of a Montana PI, methods I’ll remind readers that former Mineral County Sheriff, Mike Toth, is trying to standardize for the whole state.

Grief is a powerful thing and, like most powerful things, an entire industry has been built around it, so I try not to fault Angela Mastrovito for potentially getting suckered by two Private Investigators, but no one forced this genuinely grieving mother to add her two cents to the Rolling Stone article. No, that was done to strategically amplify the profile her daughter’s story because it’s easy, with grief as an engine, the think the ends justify the means.

Though I’m skeptical about how and why they were acquired, the calls Nathan recorded with David Barsotti do provide a window into David’s drunken “planning” that might be helpful in ascertaining one of Jim Terry’s claims, and that’s the one that local cops are dealing guns (Terry also thinks someone should dig under a concrete pad at David’s property for the body he thinks is underneath it).

Here are some exchanges I took screenshots of from this episode of Hidden True Crime:

They do not know how far it goes“…that stood out to me.

One of those “ex’s” is still alive and is most likely the one that gave an anonymous interview, probably the one who’s identity was used as a threat by the PI Mastrovito hired to get answers for her, at whatever cost.

Why is David’s face put on TV bad for him? Who is he afraid will see?

There are a few other threads that might be worth pulling on with the timing of David Barsotti’s supposed death, and one reason to pull is the possibility (right now, just a rumor) that Wayne Cashman is fixing to run a write-in candidacy for Sheriff to preserve the stank-ass legacy of Ryan Funke, a legacy carefully protected by my favorite Bathroom Judge, a judge who must love men in uniform so much he thinks of meat (“nothing burgers“, he calls ’em) when he SHOULD BE thinking of rights, as enshrined on the kind of paper you wouldn’t dream of using in a bathroom.

See that? That’s the smile of a law man who knows that rivers and other bodies of water in Montana are the best method for keeping the murder rate low.

If you know, you know.

For more context on this case, this post has 25 links to click through, so have at it.

And, in honor of NOT wanting to make a dime off this case, I’ll omit my panhandling link to my GoFundMe page for this post. But, stay tuned, because I may have more to say once the rumor of David Barsotti’s death is finally made official.

Thanks for reading!

What Is Pre-Trial Supervision Really? – by Travis Mateer

The use of a “jail diversion” pre-trial program got some attention recently because of a class-action lawsuit in Ravalli County that made some claims about the costs burdening those merely ACCUSED of a crime, not convicted of one. From the link:

A jail diversion program in Ravalli County upends important values of the justice system by forcing defendants to pay hundreds of dollars a month in fees before they’re ever found guilty, lawyers alleged Monday in federal court.

In the class action lawsuit, lawyer Phil Telfeyan of Equal Justice Under Law said one man who is disabled and whose only source of income is his Social Security check of $1,100 was billed $1,073 for the fees, leaving him $27 for all of his needs.

“He’s become homeless for the very first time in his life at 71 years old,” Telfeyan said.

So, what was the original intent of this program, run by the Ravalli County Sheriff’s Office, that’s making people like Phil Telfeyan homeless?

The Sheriff’s Office runs pretrial supervision, and Young said the idea behind it was to create a self-funded program and ensure accountability, which hadn’t taken place before 2018.

The idea is to “ensure accountability” for people who aren’t being accountable to the process, like showing up for scheduled court hearings. Is it working?

Sandra Martin, of Corvallis, testified that she was arrested for a failure to appear, and she had to pay $56 twice a week for urinalysis tests plus $105 a month for “pretrial services” — or $553 a month.

Martin said she didn’t ever get a call or a visit or help with housing or counseling as part of the pretrial fee, but she couldn’t afford to pay the costs anyway.

Her husband peeled logs for $1,600 to $2,000 a month while she cared for their grandchildren, for which the couple was financially responsible.

When Martin informed the pretrial supervision officers she couldn’t afford the fees, she heard it didn’t matter, she said.

“They said it was unfortunate, but I didn’t have a choice,” Martin said. “I was either going to pay the fine, pay the fees, or I was going to be kicked out of the program and go back to jail.”

The demand to either pay or go back to jail sounds like a threat from a shake-down, not “help” to be “accountable” to the judicial system.

Moving north, to Missoula County, here’s what the Missoula County website claims pre-trial supervision programs can do for people forced to be a part of them:

While I haven’t been in this program long, what I can already report from my “lived experience” is that unprofessional conduct putting my “freedom” at risk has already occurred with the person tasked with doing things like providing “assistance for housing, employment, transportation…” for her client (me), and my attempt to get these issues addressed by a supervisor have been ignored for a week.

To better understand what kind of “risk” I pose to the Missoula community, let’s check out my stats from pre-trial’s assessment of my criminal history:

According to the stats, there’s no violent criminal history, there’s no “failure to appears”, there’s no pending charges at the time of my arrest, and I’m 90% likely to appear for future court dates.

Instead of getting “help” and “support” from pre-trial supervision, my experience more closely aligns with the description in this report, which frames programs like the one I’m being manipulated by like this:

Have you ever walked into a meeting with your lawyer for the first time and your ankle monitor is beeping because your pre-trial compliance officer failed to send an email two days previous to ensure that entry into this forbidden zone for said meeting didn’t result in a technical violation of conditions of release?

I have.

If this was the only whoopsie, maybe I’d be a little more understanding, but I’ve already documented other troubling examples of new barriers being created by either incompetence, or something else, and I’m not the kind of “client” to sit back and allow myself to be further manipulated by cogs in this systemic meat grinder.

Going back to the report, done by the Urban Institute, here’s why they claim scrutinizing this process matters:

While I don’t often comment on the PTSD that lurks in shadows of how I interact with the world, the violence I was in proximity to working at the Poverello Center became acutely clear two years in, in 2010, when my co-worker was stabbed by a drunk client after being denied services.

For context, this article describes the legal argument his lawyer made for reducing his sentence after years already spent behind bars:

Briscoe went to the Poverello Center on June 28, 2010, seeking a shower after soiling his pants. But a worker there refused to let him in because Briscoe was drunk. He’d begun his day by drinking two-thirds of a quart of vodka and three or four beers, according to court documents. A breath test showed a blood alcohol level of .166, more than twice the legal driving limit.

After being turned away from the Pov, Briscoe returned and stabbed the man, according to court records.

Much of Thursday’s hearing focused on Briscoe’s alcoholism, as well as a nine-year stretch of sobriety when he lived in Chippewa Falls, Wisc., and worked at an alcohol treatment center.

There, he had a reputation as a compassionate man and hard worker, who’d be welcome to return to his former line of work there, according to testimony presented at the hearing.

His belligerence at the Poverello Center was an alcohol-fueled aberration, Boggs said, featuring “things that were said by a drunken man … (who’d) reached absolute bottom.”

Briscoe himself told Townsend that “I am an alcoholic. Alcohol has run through my life.”

Boylan said the true aberration comprised Biscoe’s nine sober years in Wisconsin, pointing out that even when incarcerated, Briscoe was caught this past September drinking “pruno,” an alcoholic jailhouse concoction.

Townsend pointed out that nowhere in Briscoe’s presentence report does he say he’s sorry.

Psychologist Janet Allison, who interviewed Briscoe extensively, testified that “he felt very bad about himself” because of the incident.

“Is that not another way of saying he’s sorry he got caught?” Townsend queried.

She again sentenced Briscoe to 20 years in prison, but this time suspended five years.

No, I don’t think John Briscoe was ever sorry that he attacked and stabbed my co-worker, who I was supervising at the time, because there are other things that wouldn’t be in a “pre-sentence report” that contributed to the dangerous atmosphere at the Poverello Center.

Right, Eran Pehan? Isn’t that why we settled with Tom and his lawyer when he sued us?

After my co-worker was stabbed, I was targeted by some unstable clients and had to take out several restraining orders. I also had weapons pulled on me several times, so yeah, PTSD, but I’m not bringing this up for sympathy. No, I’m referencing my own struggles because the conduct of alleged “professionals” gaslighting me behind the scenes right now is, I believe, part of a strategy, and it’s one I am saddened to see occur, since some of these people knew me when I was the coordinator for the Homeless Outreach Program from 2010 to 2016, when I recognized my own significant “burnout” and left on my own accord.

While it might seem outlandish to claim, there’s a chance what’s coming down on me like a snowball made of shit is, in part, the result of my Big Sky Epstein Network coverage, like this post about Sultan Sulayem, Missoula Probation and Parole, and someone involved in P&P who is now a judge…the same judge who signed my arrest warrant, I will add.

I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

While I watch how the watchers watch me, the city of Missoula is getting sued left and right and I’m loving it. There’s the litigation to pry the report on Keithi Worthington’s unprofessional conduct from Mayor Davis’s sweaty hands, there’s the wrongful death lawsuit for how Missoula cops killed Ross Robertson, and now there’s litigation against the crown jewel of midtown gentrification, the Midtown Commons:

Residents near a public-private development in the Missoula Midtown neighborhood allege in a lawsuit filed last month that they did not have a proper ability to participate in the project.

The suit, filed by a nonprofit called Rooted in Environmental Justice on June 17, argues the Midtown Commons development was illegally approved by the Missoula City Council.

Lawyers for the neighbors allege the process did not follow the state Constitution’s right to participate, a right to a clean and healthy environment and did not follow local rules when selling a portion of the land.

“Members of the public, including plaintiffs, who attended the May 18, 2026 hearing did not have access to all the information that informed the city’s decision, had not been able to participate in previous meetings developing the decision and were not able to meaningfully participate in the decision,” the lawsuit said.

If you appreciate what it’s taken me over the last few years to continue pushing back against the corrupt mono-party running this town like a tyrannical fiefdom, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

A New Cop Accountability Machine For Missoula? – by Travis Mateer

Unions and Government both exist, whether we want them to or not, and when two retarded things combine forces–like unions and government–what you get is the modern American police force.

In my attempt to match the vibe, I used AI to develop a prototype of mechanized discipline for local law enforcement called the “Reprimand Machine” and this machine uses what I’m calling the “Wheel of Wrist Slaps” to reprimand misbehaving cops. If Mayor Davis (or Stacie “Dark Money” Anderson) would like to give me a million dollars, I can 3-D print a version of this handy machine and start testing it out on the kind of cops who are taser-trigger-happy for tiny women in yellow cars.

Yeah, I’m talking to YOU, Lucas Bighouse!

When you let the Police Union develop disciplinary actions for their dues-paying members, what you get looks like this from the collective bargaining agreement police have with the city of Missoula:

All these colors and numbers are probably confusing for the simple creatures we give guns and tasers to, so I think MY accountability machine will simplify and streamline the process of pretend accountability, just like renters in Missoula are pretending they live in a FIGHTING COMMUNITY!

The last panelist to present, Sapp brought in qualitative information based on the work of the Tenants Union. Sapp stated that before the Tenants Union existed, he believed that there weren’t many options for renters, that they just had to accept a lack of control over housing.

But now, as more unions arise across the state, Sapp said there may be a different, more community-empowered way forward.

“Renting in Missoula now means that you are part of a fighting community,” Sapp said. “You are a part of a community of people who are rediscovering the power of strong neighborhoods and strong relationships and strong unions.

“We are rediscovering western Montana’s storied and deep history of people power and community defense, standing on the shoulders of the giants who fought before us against the Copper Kings and the Timber Barons.”

Sorry, but just saying you’re part of a “fighting community” doesn’t magically make it so. When you invoke the labor fights of yesteryear, it’s important to understand that many of those fights were, you know, ACTUAL FIGHTS where people actually got hurt, sometimes even killed, and often arrested. In fact, that’s why we have a “Free Speech Corner” in Missoula: enough rowdy laborers were willing to get arrested and fill the jail because they understood THAT is what was required, back then, to move the needle on peasant rights.

In autumn 1909, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Jack Jones arrived in Missoula, soon followed by there comrade Frank Little. After renting space for a union hall, they took to the streets, determined to spread “the glad tidings of a great revolutionary union” to Missoula’s working class. From this corner, they demanded union hiring halls for timber workers while preaching the destruction of capitalism, worker control of production and workplace-centered democracy. On September 28, 1909, the police arrested Little and Jones for violating Missoula’s long-ignored ban of public speaking. Flynn immediately put out a call for additional speakers. Her goal was to fill the Missoula jail and cost the city so much money and trouble that it would agree to allow the IWW to continue organizing. During the next week, over seventy IWW speakers were arrested, including the pregnant Flynn. On October 8, faced with overflowing jails, increasing expenses, and a growing public relations nightmare, the city council capitulated. The IWW had secured its right to speak, a lasting victory for the First Amendment.

Did the IWW secure a “lasting victory” for the First Amendment? No, I don’t they did, and I say that as a citizen journalist who would be arrested if I entered the exclusion zone pictured below, which includes the “free speech corner”, without permission from the individual tasked with monitoring my movements.

Why did the Missoula County Attorney’s Office change this NO TRAVIS bubble? Did they realize that the original one, which centered on Break Espresso, wasn’t legally binding because it banned me from accessing a Federal Highway? And why won’t they disclose the communication I demanded about this change for my appeal with the Montana Supreme Court?

What are you trying to hide from me, Mr. Bloom?

If I was a paid news reporter at the Billings Gazette then the protective umbrella of something called the Montana News Guild might be able to help me, but I’m not, so it can’t.

For the citizens of Billings, though, their union-protected reporters have taken that union support and, in turn, turned that support into stories about Veterans of wars, missing and murdered indigenous women, and the community EVERYONE knows needs the most protection, peaceful Jews who want nothing more than to get along with their neighbors and calmly integrate with their adopted local communities.

The Montana News Guild was founded to protect the future of The Billings Gazette’s journalists.

We are the inheritors of a proud tradition in a great state. Since 1885, The Billings Gazette has published in what is now Montana’s largest city, documenting the lives of a diverse citizenry in one of the largest newspaper coverage areas in the nation. In the course of that 135 years, our newsroom has educated and advocated for its readers while holding those in power accountable to a democratic society.

Our newsroom has covered the effects of combat on families and soldiers from World War I to Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve published stories and editorials advocating for our Jewish community, and held law enforcement and political officials accountable for failing to investigate missing and murdered indigenous people.

Newspapers, cops, and unions sucking dues from their individually-impotent members have all contributed to us arriving at this point in our history. Does anyone think that’s a GOOD thing?

Information has ALWAYS been the most valuable commodity because knowing what others don’t is a tremendous advantage. I hope the corrupt, vile, and vindictive local power brokers now understand what I’m willing to take from them in order to make the community my kids are growing up in less retarded than the retarded status quo the psychopath class has worked so hard to establish.

If you appreciate what I’ve been doing at this site since 2016, then consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps as I keep fighting back against the lawfare heaped on me by corrupt, desperate people.

Thanks for reading!

Why Doesn’t Mayor Davis Care About Missoula’s Violent Cop Problem? – by Travis Mateer

On Monday, during the public comment portion of City Council, a citizen claimed there were dozens of examples of police brutality in Missoula that he’s seen over the years in his capacity as a Missoula Public Defender and, going further, he claimed that Mayor Andrea Davis is aware of this violence and that she doesn’t seem to care.

Is he right?

Since one of Missoula’s City Council members used to be a cop, what does Bob Campbell think about his role now?

If Bob thinks local cops already have the training they need to offer “the most efficient, professional services available,” then how does he explain Lucas Bighouse, the cop involved in BOTH the tasing incident getting media attention AND the death of Ross Robertson, which Missoula is now being sued over?

A wrongful death lawsuit filed in Missoula County court claims a man due to deadly force that was used during a response at his home on May 29, 2024.

The complaint was filed by Patti Jacques, both individually and as personal representative of Ross Robertson’s estate. It names the City of Missoula and unidentified city employees as John Does.

Maybe Bob, the former cop, is too busy conspiring with Missoula’s chief city prosectutor, Keithi Worthington, to hide the results from that inconvenient investigation I think the public has a right to see, since it involves courts, cops, and thousands of public dollars.

In June of 2025, the judges met with Missoula’s chief administrative officer Dale Bickell to present concerns that Worthington’s conduct was unprofessional and not giving the independence of the court full respect, according to Tuesday’s complaint. They raised concerns that Worthington was blurring the separation of powers and had made claims about Municipal Court processes and data during City Council meetings that weren’t grounded in evidence.

According to the complaint, the judges requested that this be addressed through management action by internal executive leadership. Instead, the city chose to hire attorney Jordan Crosby to conduct an external investigation.

During the investigation, in August of 2025, city councilor Bob Campbell moved to transfer $25,000 from the court to the Missoula Police Department and moved to cut $66,000 from the court’s baseline staff pay increases, the judges’ complaint says. The complaint further alleges that Worthington supported these efforts by distributing inaccurate information about court procedures and statistics.

“It was evident that Ms. Worthington had actively supported Councilor Campbell’s efforts by contributing to narratives or information that Plaintiffs believe were inaccurate or misleading,” the complaint states. “During the pendency of the Crosby investigation, Ms. Worthington continued to work with City Councilors Nugent and Campbell to undermine the credibility of the Court by claiming the Court was not following established laws and procedures.

How did Bob get so familiar with sucking up money so good? Well, in another recent Missoulian article, Bob opined on his peer’s “dark money” influence and explained that he got familiar with dark money by hanging up his uniform (and testicles?) to briefly work for Americans For Prosperity.

A Missoula City councilor said Monday night that a fellow councilor’s dark money organization has helped trickle funding into local political campaigns, including her own race for reelection. 

Ward 5 Councilor Bob Campbell said money from A Better Big Sky, a political nonprofit led by fellow Ward 5 Councilor Stacie Anderson, indirectly paid for electioneering material like mailers for several local races in recent years. 

“It is completely legitimate, completely above the table,” Campbell said at the council meeting. “But appearance-wise it is just awful the way it looks, it kinda makes you sit back and think how this operates.”

At Monday’s council meeting, Campbell did say he has worked for the Montana branch of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative 501(c4) nonprofit that poured millions of dollars into the June 2026 primary election seeking to elect more hardline conservatives to the Montana Legislature.

Campbell said he has worked as a paid canvasser and volunteer for the group. He said while dark money appears to be inevitable in politics, he wanted to learn more about how the money can impact local races.

Since he’s a politician now, learning to play the politician game with public dollars, Bob SHOULD BE WORRIED about optics regarding power and how that power is being systematically abused by his former colleagues. I’ve been saying there’s a serious problem for SIX FUCKING YEARS because “the optics” of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office euthanizing and executing two black men in a liberal college town is REAL BAD, and ramifications of those actions won’t just disappear because legacy media can’t (or won’t) keep the pressure on, the ramifications fester as new corpses, like Ross Robertson, get added to the pile.

But it’s not just the cop-made corpses Bob should be worried about.

Those targeted by law enforcement for low-level harassment–like Brandon Bryant has been targeted since his video-recorded beat-down last summer showed what happens to citizens without repercussion in this town all the time–ALSO get targeted by prosecutors, like the Missoula County Attorney’s Office in Bryant’s case when they stacked an additional charge for what he said online, essentially criminalizing speech in order to further insulate cops from the consequences of their un-checked violence.

The big question now for local power brokers and money maids is this: will the dam of narrative control hold against the deepening cracks? And, the obvious follow up question: what if it doesn’t?

If our elected leaders are as predictable as I assume they are, I anticipate they will just cast a wider net of strategic victimhood for themselves, like Kirsten Pabst started doing for her fellow prosectors after Daddy Fed came in to piss on her and Fred’s turf over a decade ago.

Will it work? If the media helps, and the public has a short attention span, most likely yes, but right now the media is NOT helping the power brokers maintain narrative control, so I’ll allow myself to be cautiously optimistic.

If you’d like to help me work on widening the cracks of their dam, my new GoFundMe page is currently accepting donations. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

On Media Wolves, Podcast Vultures, And The Apparent Impossibility Of Telling An Honest Story – by Travis Mateer

Today’s post about narrative control is a continuation from yesterday’s post about Missoula’s power couple, Sheriff Jeremiah and hospital Barbie. In that post I referenced EWU Media and their desire to obtain and distribute footage from two Montana cases, but this effort is being legally challenged by the Missoula County Attorney’s Office, citing CCJI (Confidential Criminal Justice Information) as the reason to deny EWU’s request.

To better understand this Nevada-based media company, let’s look at their website:

Is this “media” company monetizing public record requests for commercial use? It appears so. They also make documentaries and do “investigative journalism” while feeding the insatiable appetite for “True Crime” content, which is an audience dominated by primarily women in various stages of wine intoxication.

When I started looking for online criticism of this business approach to online “storytelling” I found some interesting criticism, like this article from Vox:

If you’re arrested in America for a minor charge — say, for speeding or loitering — the punishment from the legal system might end up being the least of your worries. You might wake up a few months later and see your arrest, filmed through a police body camera, with a million views on TikTok or YouTube. A few days later, it might have 5 million views, or 20 million. Your face would be next to dozens of other faces of the recently arrested, all on monetized, for-profit social media channels. And it would be almost impossible to get the videos taken down. Like so much of the algorithm-driven internet, this particular subsection can be easy to miss. But it’s massive.

A popular YouTube channel like Code Blue Cam averages over 10 million views a video, and has totaled more than a billion across hundreds of videos. Another, Midwest Safety, has totaled over 1.5 billion views. There are dozens like this, all with similar names: “Body Cam Watch,” “PoliceActivity,” “EWU Bodycam.” At least one channel is represented by an agency that represents more traditional influencers. These channels are now well-known enough that recent arrestees have posted specifically about the fear of ending up on these channels. “I literally have panic attacks about this,” one posted on Reddit. “If my video was released I’d go off the deep end.” Another: “I feel like it will not only affect my chances of getting into a good career, but that millions of people would see me acting like a drunken idiot.”

Body-camera footage was supposed to create a layer of objective accountability for the benefit of citizens, not create an exploitive, for-profit industry of media exploiters, but that is what apparently happened, and it happened while Missoula law enforcement attempted to play the same exploitive game by directly collaborating with Live PD, a collaboration that resulted in this criticism of Bill Burt’s performance for the cameras (the image is not directly related to the Missoulian article):

In its first weekend putting the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office on live broadcast, Live PD and the production crew’s accompanying deputies have drawn allegations of “hamming it up” for good television — but the Sheriff’s Office strongly defended a stop in question as appropriate.

Anna Baldwin described her son’s Sept. 21 experience in a letter published in the Missoulian on Tuesday. Baldwin, the 2014 Montana Teacher of the Year, expanded on her son’s experience in a phone interview with the Missoulian on Tuesday.

Baldwin, of Arlee, said her son was parked at the Wye, “collecting himself” and preparing to drive home up Evaro Hill after receiving some distressing personal news, when he was approached by a deputy sheriff. Her son, 15, told Baldwin the encounter had been friendly and professional until camera crews rolled up on the scene.

Then, she said Capt. Bill Burt became aggressive with her son. Her son said the officer repeatedly told him “Don’t lie to me” about how much he had been drinking and conducted field sobriety tests outside his car.

“The biggest thing I worry about is the effect of the camera on the person who is being filmed,” Baldwin said in a phone interview with the Missoulian on Tuesday, “whether that’s the office, maybe hamming it up a little bit for effects, or the person being sought, in this case, my son. And he was humiliated. He thought he was going to be on TV for all the wrong reasons.”

Moving on, the woman going viral for getting tased by Missoula police officer, Lucas Bighouse, recently went on a Libertarian podcast to pitch her GoFundMe account, which is being run by a woman with the Tik Tok handle “406Revolutionized”.

The woman running “406Revolutionized”, Amanda McKnight, got into this work after her husband, Joshua McKnight, was arrested and prosecuted for meth possession after a car crash in Sanders County. Now Amanda is an “advocate” for those moving through “the system“.

In this episode of Unpacking Injustice, we’re joined by Amanda McKnight, founder of 406 Revolutionized, a growing Facebook group supporting incarcerated individuals and their families across Montana.

Amanda shares how her husband’s incarceration led her to become what she calls an “unwilling student of a broken legal system.” What began as a personal search for answers quickly evolved into a statewide advocacy effort focused on helping families navigate Montana’s criminal legal system, access reliable information, and find community during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

Amanda discusses the challenges families face when a loved one becomes incarcerated, the importance of making legal systems easier to understand and navigate, and the role lived experience plays in advocating for change. She also shares her concerns about the parole board, prison conditions, communication barriers, and the need for greater transparency and accountability within Montana’s correctional system.

While I don’t doubt Amanda McKnight is doing some positive advocacy work for families with incarcerated loves ones–like her tweaker husband who walked out on his own trial, then used his absence in a failed attempt to appeal his conviction–I shudder at the thought that we, as a society, will be increasingly relying on digital content creators and social media algorithms to identify worthy “victims” of this dysfunctional system for the normies to throw some digital donation-dollars at so they can sleep better at night.

In the case of the tased victim of Missoula PD, it’s Northwest Liberty News doing the victim vetting. Who is Northwest Liberty News? Just some Bundy boosters doing their part to save America from itself:

NorthWest Liberty News was founded in 2013 by James White, who still serves as editor and host of the podcast that bears its namesake. White, a Network Engineer by trade, moved to the picturesque landscape and open skies of Northwest Montana just over 10 years ago with his wife and two daughters.

NorthWest Liberty News was quickly thrust into the world of alternative media shortly after its inception when Oath Keeper Founder and January 6 Political Prisoner Stewart Rhodes asked White to provide video coverage for the Oath Keepers’ journey to Nevada in defense of Cliven Bundy’s Ranch.

After listening to the interview, where the victim explains how nice the cops were in all the other instances where she got caught driving on a suspended license, I realized there was much more to this story than what was being presented to the public. Seeing “Liberty News” get involved only increases my suspicions.

Is everything a grift?

While I try telling myself that not everything is a grift, evidence of grift is all I ever seem to find when I start digging into, or try to collaborate with, different media efforts, like the podcast collective I got kicked out of after calling out Mark Steeves for being a grifter who did NOT do what his email said he would do when I was “onboarded” to “Alt Media United”.

While I haven’t given up on collaborating with other media efforts, like providing an interview to the Peaceful Sea Network/Hodler Media Group about the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office euthanizing and executing two black men, I have to admit that I might not have the tits or the temperament to be a successful content creator for the Libertarian crowd.

Should I apologize to the Stevenson family for not having the tits or temperament to make the murder of their family member by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office sexy enough for people to care about? Or should I perhaps apologize instead for being an insufferable asshole who misread the room about the worthiness of the dead black men I’ve written about dozens of times over the last six years?

If you think I’m being unfair, here’s a suggestion of what you can do: simply claim to be a reasonable person in fear of my existence and I’m sure there’s a Missoula judge out there who will gladly give you a restraining order and, when you get that restraining order, just go somewhere that you know I’ll be and get me arrested. This strategy is now a proven recipe that will continue happening as long as I continue to physically exist, with the added crime of publicly talking about the deep and disturbing corruption I’ve found hiding behind the illusion of this liberal mountain college town.

Maybe some day a Travis with tits will appear to find a more marketable victim to unlock the dark heart of Missoula with so that it’s finally understood why David Lynch was marked from birth, and why Robert CIA Redford was welcomed with open arms.

Until that day arrives, I’ll keep puttering along the remaining patches of ground I’m legally allowed to exist on and pitching my own GoFundMe page, since no “406 Revolution” is knocking on my digital door to help out.

Thanks for reading!