Zoom Chron Blog

For 20 years Missoula has been welcoming back college students at the end of summer with a downtown party called the River City Roots Festival. Here’s a fluff piece about this festival quoting some freshman college students about their new Missoula experiences:

For two University of Montana freshmen, the festival served as their first introduction to Missoula.

“It’s such a welcoming town and I love the art and everything and the community events that go on like all the time.”

The celebration also marked a first for Neveah Sims, who is originally from Wyoming.

“I haven’t been really out to these type of places, so just coming around here, seeing just like the different experiences of Missoula and stuff, and just coming downtown is really exciting for me,” she said.

I’m glad Neveah Sims didn’t get run over and killed by a drunk driver like my friend did our freshman year in college because a very drunk young man at the River City Roots Festival consumed so much alcohol that he decided to drive recklessly after punching a woman in the stomach.

This could have ended MUCH worse than it did.

On August 22, 2026, at approximately 11:05 PM, Missoula Police Department Officers were made aware of a 911 caller reporting that her parked vehicle had been struck by another vehicle on the top floor of the parking garage at 128 W. Main St. Dispatch relayed to officers that the vehicle involved was a Toyota SUV.

Officers were aware of a large amount of foot traffic due to the River City Roots Festival in the downtown area. An officer who responded to the parking garage observed the vehicle and a group of people chasing after the vehicle and yelling at it to stop. The officer activated his emergency lights to stop the vehicle.

…

The driver of the vehicle was later identified as 29-year-old David Hunter. During this time, another officer was also in the parking garage and called for witnesses to come and speak with him. A female spoke with the officer, stating she had been assaulted by Hunter. The female stated she knows Hunter personally and she positively identified him as the driver of the SUV that struck the parked vehicle. The female told the officer that Hunter had been “a lot tonight” and said that he was intoxicated.

The female said that she chased after his car and was yelling at him to stop. The female stated that Hunter exited his vehicle and she went up to him to continue to plead with him not to drive. The female said Hunter told her something similar to, “stay out of my business,” and then punched her in the stomach. Hunter then ran back to his vehicle and got inside.

While the on-scene interviews were being conducted, another officer walked to the bottom floor of the parking garage, where he heard tires squealing coming down the ramp from the second floor of the garage. The officer observed Hunter traveling in the SUV at a high rate of speed towards the exit on Ryman St. However, the vehicle did not exit, and instead turned the corner wildly to head towards the Main St. exit.

Where did David Hunter get his alcohol and who served him? Those would be the types of questions one would ask if business establishments faced consistent accountability for the damages done by their customers alcohol consumption, but a town like Missoula prioritizes BUSINESS over the health of its community, so unless David Hunter killed a cop in his drunken attempt to escape the parking garage, I doubt any other person or alcohol-serving business will be held accountable.

The cop-killing drunk I’m referencing DID trigger a criminal charge and conviction for the man who served him, which doesn’t happen too often in a drunken state like Montana, but this case highlights that it IS possible. From the link:

A bartender pleaded no contest during a hearing Wednesday to over-serving the drunken driver responsible for a crash that killed him and a Montana Highway Patrol trooper.

Nathan Hale, 31, of Woods Bay has been convicted of misdemeanor negligent endangerment, sale of alcoholic beverages during closed hours and providing alcoholic beverages to an intoxicated person for serving alcohol to Travis Vandersloot and other employees at a Bigfork bowling alley on March 23, 2009, shortly before Vandersloot crashed his vehicle into Trooper Michael Haynes’ patrol car on U.S. 93, killing them both.

Hale was tending bar that night as Vandersloot, manager Diane Pickavance, 40, and other employees gathered for drinks in the bar portion of Pick’s Bowling Center after closing.

Making money selling a substance that hurts people by contributing to lethal accidents, violence, and sexual assaults does require insurance, but that’s a cost some liquid drug dealers don’t like paying, so a few years ago a bill was introduced to the legislature to soften that financial difficulty for our liquid drug dealers:

Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, said the Senate Majority Leader’s bill on alcohol overserving liability was an “insurance bailout bill” during a heated exchange on the Senate floor on second reading Wednesday.

Senate Bill 107, proposed by Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, would limit a bar’s civil liability in overserving alcohol to patrons. The bill passed 33-17 Wednesday and will go to a third and final reading in the Senate.

The bill would also limit permissible evidence in civil cases to exclude the overserved patron’s blood alcohol content. Fitzpatrick said this is because there is no way to know in real time what that data point is, and it’s a “judgment call.”

The bill would also limit damages, both punitive and non-economic, like emotional distress, to $250,000 per incident.

Opponents said the bill benefits insurance companies and removes established protections for patrons. Proponents said bars are strapped with high insurance costs and deserve a break.

If Americans were continuing to maintain their cultural drinking habit from generation to generation, maybe business establishments that sell booze wouldn’t feel “strapped” with high insurance costs, but Gen Z is scaring the shit out of the booze industry by NOT damaging their bodies with alcohol to the degree that previous generations did, and that’s a problem for liquid drug dealers. To adapt, here’s an article explaining how alcohol retailers are changing strategies to fit the evolving drinking habits of Gen Z:

Brands may nudge you to imbibe your next cocktail at 3 p.m. as they try to figure out Gen Z’s quirky drinking habits.

Gen Z and younger millennials are generally drinking less than older generations and, when they do drink, are doing so more intentionally, prioritizing quality, flavor, and social context over quantity. That change is pushing bars and alcohol brands to design products for daytime moments, and reshaping how the industry defines a “drinking occasion.”

Across the beverage industry, brands are reorienting their new products toward earlier social occasions — brunches, festivals, dinner reservations before sunset — rather than late-night bar crawls.

Less drinking means less money for alcohol brands, like Seagrams, and the families that profit off substance abuse, like the Bronfmans, so maybe that’s why magazines, like Time, are interested in figuring out what’s up with Gen Z.

“It is becoming clear that, for whatever reasons, today’s younger generations are just less interested in alcohol and are more likely than older generations to see it as risky for their health and to participate in periods of abstinence like Dry January,” said National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism George F. Koob in a statement.

There isn’t one clear reason for alcohol’s decline among Gen Z, but experts point to a variety of factors.

One may be changing laws, including the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which set the age to purchase or publicly possess alcoholic beverages to 21. Prior to that, the minimum age to drink was 18.

Further down we get this:

Another contributing factor has to do with the changing socialization patterns of younger generations. “Alcohol tends to be a social drug, even for young people, so part of the decline in underage drinking could be related to less in-person socializing,” said Koob. On average, the amount of time people spent with friends in-person decreased from 30 hours a month in 2003 to 10 hours a month in 2020, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the epidemic of loneliness. That decline was especially marked for people aged 15 to 24.

If young people aren’t socializing as much, and they aren’t drinking as much, and some studies are suggesting they aren’t even fucking as much, then maybe it’s because our young people are VERY DEPRESSED at their relative poverty and diminished purchasing power as the out-of-control Boomers slowly lose their minds while up-sizing their empty homes.

To finish up, if alcohol is something our elected leaders appreciate and need in their own life to manage stress, then my suggestion is don’t stop now because I have a feeling things are going to be getting EVEN MORE stressful as more locals come to the realization that the political rhetoric is bullshit and the decisions on how this valley will be developed have already been made.

If you appreciate the writing of a citizen journalist who hasn’t touched a drop of booze since July 4th, 2020, then please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. The recent donations I’ve been receiving have been VERY helpful.

Thanks for reading!

William Kittredge, the writer credited with coining the phrase “Last Best Place”, describes what the poet C. K. Williams said about stories when he came to Missoula in an essay titled “The Politics of Storytelling”. Here’s the excerpt:

The poet C. K. Williams once came to Missoula and spoke of “narrative dysfunction” as a prime part of mental illness in our time. Many of us, he said, lose track of the story of ourselves, which tells us who we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to act. It doesn’t just happen to people, it happens to entire societies (for instance, in the United States during the Vietnam War). Stories are places to inhabit, inside the imagination (and places are understood in terms of stories). We all know a lot of stories and we’re in trouble when we don’t know which one is ours. Or when the one we inhabit doesn’t work anymore, and we stick with it anyway.

The story for young women in America appears pretty straightforward: there’s an ATM between your legs, ladies, so why not use it? But use it artfully, like Elle Fanning’s character in the popular Apple tv show, Margo’s Got Money Problems.

For any young woman taking society’s cues about monetizing their bodies on porn sites, like Only Fans, this Apple show literally teaches young women how to maximize the value of selling their first crotch shot, with the show’s culmination being Margo’s leg-spreading for the lens.

Is this what female empowerment is supposed to look like in 2026?

While Hollywood has been selling sex since moving pictures were a thing, it took a “conservative” influencer by the name of Savanna Cannon to give us the absurdity of reading other people’s content (commonly referred to as plagiarism, or stealing) while sitting, legs up, showing camel-toe (a slang term for tight-fabric-packaged twat).

Is this how good Christian MAGA men prefer to get their criticism of Ilhan Omar?

Cannon typically records her videos leaning back in a chair while wearing yoga pants, with her legs pulled up on either side of her. It’s a pose that highlights everything a more prurient viewer might hope to see: her bare feet and—forgive me, I am only reporting the facts here—the faint outline of her genitals.

Cannon’s recumbent poses put her groin right in the center of the vertical-video frame.

“This person sits like this every time,” one Instagram commenter wrote this week. “It’s really weird.”

Cannon isn’t subtle about it. Scroll through her Instagram page and a good 80 percent of the posts are her sitting in that pose, wearing yoga pants, often pulling them up to make them fit tighter. “My videos are for straight men,” she explained.

And lest you have any lingering doubt about the audience Cannon is cultivating, it is probably settled by knowledge of Cannon’s other career: She also posts sexual photos of herself on the subscriber site OnlyFans.

If you are a victim of cootermaxxing content pushed on your X feed without consent, new efforts announced last month by “head of product”, Nikita Bier, might help change that.

X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, admitted in a post on Monday that X’s algorithm was “missing” data about surfacing posts from people who you’ve followed back. Now, he says a tweak will “boost visibility of your posts to your mutuals,” hopefully enhancing the sense of community instead of highlighting and spreading random arguments, but didn’t explain how the data went missing in the first place.

Last week, Bier also said users who post original content will “climb faster,” after admitting that top accounts on the platform have been posting “stolen” recycled content from other users, and now this tweak might address the platform’s tilt toward controversy over other kinds of discussions.

When X product managers refer to enhancing a “sense of community”, what I hear them saying is that they are tweaking the information silo people willingly sequester themselves in so that those human money-cows don’t leave for a different information silo, one where their data-udders will be milked by a different AI tech-demon. But maybe that’s just me.

Going back in time is one way I’ve been countering the insanity of our present moment, and it’s left me with a very different impression of the political chaos magician, Donald Trump, and the genetic confidence he exemplified when he so brazenly suggested in the Access Hollywood tape that, if one is powerful enough, you can vigorously pursue women by grabbing them by the pussy.

What do I mean by “genetic confidence”? This is what I mean:

A brothel, a real estate land deal, and even a beauty pageant all play roles in a “fictional” show I’ve been re-watching recently, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve come to have a new appreciation of what David Lynch and Mark Frost encoded in their seemingly quirky cult classic, emphasis on CULT, and it’s dark.

But don’t tell that to the three ladies I overheard two days ago outside a local bar talking about Missoula’s infamous pussy-slinger, Mary Gleim.

As I listened to this enlightening chat I learned that competing with men by being a whore-wrangler is pretty cool, even if you have to dynamite your competition every now and then.

Here’s a bit from the Wikipedia version of Mary’s early life and good education:

Born Minnie Winifred Gleeson on 9 February 1845 in County Tipperary, Ireland, her father, Thomas Gleeson, was reputed to be a landowning squire. Gleim received a good education in England, including in the Romance languages.

In 1869 she met John Edgar Gleim and the couple were married in Sussex, England the following year. John Gleim came from a wealthy St Louis family and enjoyed drinking and gambling. The family’s financial affairs were entrusted to Mary so John could carry on his lifestyle without worrying about the financial matters. The couple soon emigrated to America.

The couple lived in San Francisco and New York City, where Gleim was reputedly included in the “Rogues Gallery” of New York’s most wanted felons. The couple settled in St Louis where they amassed a sizeable fortune, probably from prostitution.

In 1888 the couple set out for Alaska to take advantage of the gold rush there. They were refused admission at the Canadian border twice, Gleim’s reputation proceeding her.

And here’s where Mary had to get explosive:

Gleim had a long running feud with rival C.P “Bobby” Burns. Burns once appeared as a witness against her in a dispute over property on Front Street. The pair had had numerous run-ins, and on one occasion Burns was horse whipped and dragged half a block behind a team of horses.

Bobby Burns’ house was blown up in the early hours of 12 February 1894. Although the house was levelled, Burns survived the blast. Two men were soon arrested; Patrick Mason and William Reed. Reed was subsequently released and appeared as a witness for the prosecution. Mason was put on trial in August 1894 and the details of the conspiracy to kill Burns came to light. Gleim was accused of masterminding the plot and arrested.

When I mentioned this little piece of Missoula’s history to a friend (with his own important pieces of Missoula’s history in his head), he told me the position of Mary Gleim’s headstone toward the train tracks was an intentional nod to her clientele, the male railroad workers who paid good railroad money to fuck Mary Gleim’s whores.

“Want to see it?” He asked.

“Hell yes!” I replied!

While Mary Gleim was a violent and exploitive person, according to her official history, at least her physical assault of some local priests was because she was MOURNING a dead child, not trying to celebrate a child KILLER.

Here’s more color from Mary Gleim’s very colorful official history, starting with coming to Missoula after getting denied at the Canadian border (unlike Donald Trump’s grandpa):

After failing to move to Alaska, Mary Gleim came to Missoula in 1888 with her husband, and quickly saw the potential for prostitution with the large number of railroad workers in the town. She set up brothels one after another in West Front Street and ruled them with a fist of iron, becoming the “Queen of Missoula’s Bad Lands”. By 1890 she owned eight brothels.

Commonly known as “Mother Gleim”, she was one of Missoula’s characters and eventually owned a considerable number of properties in Missoula and elsewhere. Weighing 300 lbs, Gleim, in addition to brothel-keeping, was reputed to be a smuggler of diamonds, opium, and Chinese railroad workers. Gleim appeared frequently before the county judge on various charges arising from her drunken rages, including verbal and physical assaults. She also appeared frequently in the civil court for refusal to pay contractors and to evict tenants who could not pay their rent.

In January 1892, Gleim was convicted of assaulting two priests. While drunk, she had attended church to pay respects to the “McCormick Child” who had recently died. She asked a group of priests for a candle to light in Latin. When the priests were unable to reply as they did not understand Latin, she ripped the frocks off Father J. Neale and Brother Pascal Megazzini, claiming they were not fit to wear the holy raiments. Gleim was fined $50, but because she failed to turn up for court, she forfeited her bond and was forced to pay a total of $736.30.

Retail vagina and other flesh commodities, like twink dick, are BIG BUSINESS, not empowerment, and a central-bank-destroyed economy inevitably brings me to the inevitable rise of Hitler.

I have this book in my library, and I’m interested in history, so I’ve gone through it and one particular example of what the impoverished Weimar Republic looked like while Hitler’s reign was emerging comes to mind.

Yes, it’s true, I’ve gone from William Kittredge to Adolph Hitler in one weird blog post, so, assuming readers have a basic sense of what we were told about BIG EVENTS throughout our recent history, I think it’s pretty obvious where this goes next.

Prove me wrong, American Republic.

And thanks for reading.

Providing public opportunities for “meaningful participation” is one of the job requirements for being on City Council because that’s THE LAW that they must follow.

Want to use public money for a food truck court, or build a new home for fire trucks? Then be prepared to take public comment from members of the public, some of whom might not appreciate the methods of disenfranchisement deployed against undesirables, like me, who tried and failed SEVERAL TIMES last night to be virtually heard before I finally got through.

Needless to say, by the time I was finally allowed the privilege of unmuting myself, I was no longer a patient commentator ready to be super-mindful of the sensitivities of our elected officials, who struggle themselves to comply with the most basic parts of doing their fucking job, which is interacting with the public (not digging a latrine with golden shovels, which I had AI depict in the image above for therapeutic reasons).

While there are rules of decorum to adhere to, my hope is that City Council takes those rules and shoves them up their collective ass, because going forward, I think I’ll be caring about decorum about as much as the rule-benders themselves seem to care, which appears to be only when it suits them.

Take the latest act of rule-bending by the Missoula Redevelopment Agency so that a private property owner, who is currently allowing his property to be used by drug-addicted vagrants, can get $50,000 dollars in public TIF money to remove that building for a food truck court.

See how gentrification works? Missoula’s leadership enables homeless drug addicts as they degrade certain parts of town for years, catering to their “needs” while adding to downward pressure on property values in these negatively impacted areas, which then provides the justification for public money intervention and opportunities for private developers to take that public money so they can create a safe space for ethnic food trucks.

And this asshole wanting public money thinks “emulating Bozeman” is a compelling marketing pitch?

If you don’t think private developers taking public money are assholes making our community MORE expensive and LESS safe, it’s probably because you don’t understand how Urban Renewal Districts and Targeted Economic Development Districts work, financially handcuffing first responders by taking increased tax revenue and diverting it to unelected bureaucrats, like Ellen Buchanan, and if you don’t understand why this TIF shell-game is a public threat, it’s probably because local media is particularly reluctant to connect certain stories–like resignations at the Missoula Rural Fire District–to growing opposition to this shell game.

Before I get to the NBC Montana news articles from June, which omit any reasoning for Paul Finlay’s sudden departure from his position at Missoula’s Rural Fire District, let’s take a look at the warning he provided right before his resignation about TEDDs:

After this warning about subsidized development within TEDDs, Finlay was suddenly out at Missoula Rural Fire, which was reported as minimally as possible by NBC Montana:

Missoula Rural Firefighters local 2457 announced they acknowledge Chief Paul Finlay’s recent resignation.

This comes after the fire district announced Friday that Finley would retire effective June 21.

The union stated that they “look forward to working collaboratively with the district’s new leadership to advance our shared mission and continue providing exceptional service to our community.”

Around this same time NBC Montana also reported on other concerning resignations impacting first responders at Missoula’s Rural Fire District amidst weird behavior from a closed-door meeting being kept secret, even from fellow firefighters:

A room full of firefighters and members of the public gathered at a Missoula Rural Fire District Board meeting on Tuesday evening amid concerns about the departure of two assistant chiefs, and transparency concerns.

This comes after Board Chair Ben Murphy adjourned a meeting on May 12 while Secretary Dan Corti tried to open discussion to the public. Corti has since resigned.

The article continues with this:

At the forefront of concern in the latest meeting was a decision made at a closed-door executive session on May 27, where the board passed one agenda item — a separation proposal.

Firefighters repeatedly asked what was passed at that meeting, including during public comment on other agenda items.

But Murphy maintained there wasn’t a need to release that information to the public, or the firefighters.

“We have, are, and continue to follow the law regarding open meetings,” said Murphy following a 10-15 minute discussion of district transparency.

Isn’t this interesting? It’s almost like there’s a direct correlation between Urban Renewal Districts, Targeted Economic Development Districts, and local officials struggling to follow open meeting laws in order to actually ACT in a transparent manner for the public good. In this case, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the new sewer district for the Blackfoot Crossing development in Bonner.

It’s cool, I get it. Four years ago I went on KGVO and helped educate listeners of a talk radio show, hosted by Nick and Peter, about why I thought the Crisis Mill Levy was a bad idea and THIS was the electoral result:

Whether it was inflation, the stock market or a general malaise around taxes, voters in Missoula were clear on Tuesday night, saying they weren’t ready to fund any more projects or services — at least right now.

For the first time in recent memory, Missoula voters upended two funding initiatives, one being a $19 million bond to improve the county fairgrounds and the other being a levy that would have raised $5 million annually to support crisis services.

Both campaigns spent months working to drum up support but in the end, they both fell short of their goal. What happens next in the realm of crisis services will likely take center stage in the months to come.

“I wouldn’t have tackled this project if I didn’t have strong convictions about it in the first place,” said Shannon Flanagan, who spearheaded the crisis services levy. “I still feel that in our long-term solution to these things, we took the wrong step yesterday. But I certainly have to respect the results of the election. It’s a bitter pill, but we’ll move forward and pivot to different solutions.”

Did our local officials learn any lessons from this failure to convince voters to give them more money?

Yes, I think they learned that they needed to be more sneaky with how they’re operating to make deals while simultaneously escalating tactics behind the scenes to ensure members of the public, especially a citizen journalist/whistleblower like me, pay a HEAVY PRICE for mapping out that giant space between bullshit rhetoric and on-the-ground reality.

To help show readers of this humble blog (watched closely by unwell people) that I’m not the only public commenter keen on naming the names influencing the harsh housing reality for the poors while elected rubber-stampers stamp, here’s the public comment the preceded mine:

And here’s mine, which I don’t consider successful, since showing frustration is a gift to the extended prosecution team going after me and others, like Brandon Bryant, who I invoked in my comment before dropping the F-bomb and getting scolded by the Mayor:

I hope this comment is somewhat softened by the EVERYONE IS AWESOME Lego set visible in the background, which I added to my Lego world so that it could more accurately reflect the seriousness of our REAL one, where some people’s right to be heard are VERY important to our local elected officials.

Here’s a better shot:

If you would like to help me expose how local power operates, click on my new GoFundMe page and make a donation today!

Ten years ago I sounded so much more reasonable as I discussed my non-profit work at the blog of former Billings reporter, Ed Kemmick.

But read some of the 27 articles I wrote about “urban camp cleanups” since then and, well, you might understand why I’m more than a little frustrated about Missoula’s current state of affairs.

And on that note, thanks for reading!

The first thing I’ll address in this post is the legal term that my hunch relies on, and that term–indemnification–is defined as “compensating a person for damages or losses they have incurred or will incur related to a specified accident, incident, or event.” How does this term apply to irrigation ditches, you’re probably wondering. Great question. Let’s see if I can answer that question in a way that makes sense to a layperson.

To begin the process of understanding this legal term, and how a legal term could connect to a murder investigation, it’s important to establish what kind of legal liability the irrigation ditch company currently has when it comes to bad things happening in or around their water infrastructure: NONE!

To help make this case, here’s the first page of a legal opinion from the City Attorney’s Office issued in 2013:

This legal opinion from 13 years ago included the current police chief at the time, Mark Muir, and two future police chiefs, Mike Brady and Mike Colyer. While the catalyzing incident prompting this legal opinion was the injury of a child on a bike, we will soon see that more serious injuries have been associated with this irrigation infrastructure before Leah Hartley was found dead last September.

Here’s more context from the legal opinion reminding law enforcement of this liability vacuum:

Two years before this legal opinion was issued, a man was found dead in an irrigation ditch by his drinking companion. No foul play was suspected.

Authorities have released the name of a 54-year-old transient man who drowned in an irrigation ditch in Missoula.

Police Detective Scott Brodie says Edward Zariczny and a friend were drinking near the Orange Street Bridge on Friday evening. The friend told investigators he went to a convenience store to get more beer and found Zariczny dead in the ditch when he returned at about 6 p.m.

Brodie says there is nothing to indicate criminal activity.

In 2019 another body was found in an irrigation ditch, but, despite an autopsy being performed, nothing indicated this case was being investigated as a possible homicide:

Missoula County Sheriff and Coroner TJ McDermott says that the body of Robert Louis Foshag, 59, of Missoula was discovered in an irrigation ditch off of South Fourth Street.

The Missoula Police Department is still investigating the case and the body was taken to the Montana State Crime Lab so that an autopsy can be performed.

Two years later another body was found and, though this death was considered “suspicious” at first, it was eventually determined to be accidental:

Missoula Police confirm that a 60-year-old woman was found dead on West Broadway Island in Missoula on Saturday morning.

Police tell us the call came in around 10:55 a.m. A passerby reported seeing a person lying face down in a side stream on the island. Police are not sure how long the body has been there.

Police say the death is suspicious, but there is no reason to believe there’s a danger to the community. They say they are unsure if a crime has been committed.

Here’s the other brief local media blurb that essentially declared NOTHING TO SEE HERE!

The Missoula Police Department report that it’s been determined following an investigation that 52-year-old Kimberly A. Michell accidentally drowned and the cause of death was “non-criminal.”

Law enforcement responded to a report of a body in the river near the 1100 block of West Broadway at approximately 10:50 a.m. on Saturday.

MPD spokesman Sgt. Travis Welsh previously said that the body was found submerged in shallow water about five feet from the north shoreline of the river.

By September 2025, when Leah Hartley was found dead in water at 6th and Grant, the declaration wasn’t just about Leah’s case, but ANY case where an unattended body is found within Missoula County.

Why make such a broad declarative statement about department policy? What was happening in the fall of 2025 that could have law enforcement suddenly interested in presenting this department policy to the public? Could developing a draft plan of the Midtown Commons project, which would entail TAKING ON LEGAL LIABILITY for the city from the ditch company, have been a factor in declaring to the Missoula public that “all deaths outside of active medical supervision” would be treated “as homicides for investigation purposes until evidence proves otherwise“?

With this new liability the city appears to be taking on through the development of the Midtown Commons project in mind, I biked down the multi-modal trail to where open water flows, then I walked through the property that will radically change when the big machinery finally comes to alter this landscape.

Currently there are no legal repercussions that can be taken against the owners of these irrigation ditches if and when a citizen gets clumsy and dies in them, but after the city takes ownership of the ditch infrastructure in this part of Missoula, that will change.

Is the city prepared for this new liability? Especially as it relates to dead women and the people looking to blame someone else for women making bad choices that lead to their untimely demise?

This is where actual murder investigations might come in handy for local leaders who are sensitive to the need to avoid costly lawsuits that can sometimes arise when the consequences of self-destructive behavior goes looking for a scapegoat to blame, which we are seeing right now in the death of Katherine McCollough and the effort by her friends and family to blame Great Falls native, Reggie Watts, for her death.

Here’s a quote from the Rolling Stone article attempting to cast blame on Watts for his ex-girlfriend’s lethal drug addiction:

Friends struggled to come to terms with how, in the span of around two years, McCollough developed a once-unimaginable addiction to ketamine. And how the figure who had loomed largest over the 36-year-old’s life was now absent: her most recent ex-boyfriend, Reggie Watts.

Had it not been for McCollough’s all-consuming relationship with the popular musician and comedian, nine of her close friends and sister tell Rolling Stone, they believe she would still be alive. They say that McCollough, to quote one friend, wouldn’t have “fried” her brain without Watts’ encouragement to take a heavy array of psychedelics and designer drugs in the name of intimacy and enlightenment. And that following McCollough’s drug-induced manic episode, which prompted Watts to break up with her, a despondent McCollough wouldn’t have secretly traveled to Peru in March to take her life.

When something tragic happens it’s natural to look for someone to blame, especially if the tragedy occurs to a member of a protected class who can’t be held accountable for their actions. Knowing this, and combined with the tendency of people who drink until they’re a danger to themselves and others in Missoula, it now seems prudent for local law enforcement to convey to the public that ALL dying outside, in irrigation ditches and elsewhere, will be investigated as homicides until evidence proves otherwise.

My public comment last Thursday to the MRA board, though a bit garbled, was my first attempt at framing this new incentive to treat all clumsy women (and sometimes men) who die in water as possible victims of homicide. I even offered the possibility of hiring a private investigator, like Guy Baker, to help the city avoid legal liability in future cases where it might want to challenge the “accidental” nature of how people, especially women, seem to die in and around our liberal mountain town all too frequently.

In Leah Hartley’s case, local Detectives had a person of interest who Leah had called 911 about before her death, but since she was drinking heavily and acting crazy, it was easy to look past that man’s role in her life, which included hiring her to work at his place of work, and finding her an apartment to live in, which just happened to be the one below his apartment.

For the Midtown Commons project, where city leaders have determined the cost/benefit of taking on legal liability through indemnification is a risk worth taking, my perspective doesn’t need to be taken into consideration because our city leaders are VERY GOOD at narrative control, but for the small subset of killers I think we have living in this region, you might want to avoid dumping dead bodies anywhere the city has a financial interest to conduct a REAL murder investigation.

If you appreciate my citizen journalism, which I produce as a 26-year resident of the town I’m writing about (unlike, say, Nick Shirley) please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

Are my rights being violated?

Three years ago I was told attending city council meetings, in person, on Monday evenings was no longer legal for me to do because of a civil restraining order. This was NOT a violation of my rights to make public comment, I was told by the judge, because I could still attend meetings virtually and make comments with my phone.

As long as the other half of that toxic relationship wasn’t present, though, I was still able to attend other public meetings, meetings which, by law, MUST BE HELD for entities like the City Planning Commission, which met last Wednesday, and the Police Commission, which met the day after.

For more on the actual law dictating what must be done to be in compliance open meeting laws, here’s a screenshot from Montana Code Annotated:

When Missoula’s 4th District bathroom judge allowed another civil restraining order from a state legislator to be issued for the next decade of my life–with one of the four exclusion zones of 1,500 ft removing my ability to go anywhere downtown until 2036–my ability to attend ANY public meeting, in person, effectively ended.

That’s why I tried attending the Police Commission virtually, which I quickly realized would be impossible, since the conference ID was missing a digit.

The only evidence I’ve found so far that this meeting even happened are the minutes. No video or audio recording appears to be available, which itself seems legally dubious to me.

One reason I wanted to attend this meeting was to see if any public comments were made about Lucas Bighouse’s taser skills after he got scared of that tiny woman in her little yellow car and lit her up. Would keyboard warriors, like Kevin Hunt, show up to make good on their endless Facebook commentary?

According to the minutes, no, it would appear that no one from the public showed up, so no one made a stink about Missoula’s violent cop problem. The absent public also missed the minimal cost of reloading the new toy cops have to play with, the GRAPPLER!

The Police Commission and City Planning Commission may have been spared the annoyance of dealing with me, a member of the public commenting on their public business funded with public dollars, but at what cost? Because there are lawsuits now, and I know from at least one background source that getting caught violating open meeting laws is a very sore subject for Missoula’s dominant political party.

Unlike the Police Commission, the City Planning Commission did post a video, so here’s a clip about the “data center” amendment I found relevant to the mostly rabid frothing happening elsewhere on this subject:

After my double-failure to public comment I did finally got through to what I’m sure was the dismay of the MRA boardroom when they realized how I was struggling to interpret a legal term, as applied to murder investigations, or lack thereof, that will be the focus of tomorrow’s post.

If I get point-of-ordered by Miss Better Big Sky trying to comment tomorrow, which I’m currently planning on doing, then it will just add to the multitude of tiny little transgressions here and there when it comes to the rules that double-standard town expects selective enforcement of.

If you appreciate my curated attention to local processes and attempt to inform those processes with my delightful commentary, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!