Missoula Crime Spikes With Spring, 28 Felony Cases in Process

By all appearances, Missoula’s Crime rate appears to be rising as Spring rolls in. A week ago, Missoula Police had double the number of DUIs over the weekend and the County attorney’s office is reporting nearly double the average number of felony cases over all.

"We have had an incredibly busy crime week," said Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst. "We processed 28 new cases over the last seven days. Just shy of 20 would probably be our average, somewhere in there it is hard to say. It is not real consistent because we sort of jump around, but 28 is pretty high."

The list of crimes goes on and on and on…

"Not surprisingly six of those were drug cases, felony drug cases," Pabst said. "We had six new violence cases, two new endangerment cases, one involving negligent vehicular homicide, a sex case, four failure to registers or other status type violations and a whole handful or property crimes as well."

Pabst says that, at this point nearly 80 percent of the drug cases are meth related, but the fear is that heroin use is on the rise. Pabst says Missoula usually lags behind Seattle and other Washington cities in drug trends where heroin use has become so common it has surpassed meth use.