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6/16/2025
Downtown safety concerns make headlines
Early in June, the Great Falls Police Department announced a summer safety initiative to increase officer presence downtown. The initiative will include redirecting school resource officers to assist with foot patrols.
The initiative has put the city’s unhoused population in the spotlight, as both public officials and residents have talked about a rise in issues stemming from that group.
“When the weather gets warm, we start to see an uptick in things,” said Doug Otto, captain of the patrol bureau at GFPD. “There’s a whole bunch of different pieces that have gone into this one. We’ve had more of the unhoused population in Great Falls than I can recall over the years.”
The department has stressed that while officers will police criminal activity, the issues surrounding homelessness are multifaceted and the department’s role doesn’t address the entire issue. As Otto said in an interview with Montana Free Press, “We can handle the enforcement side.”
Organizations that work with people experiencing homelessness are pushing to make their roles more prominent as well. Cari Yturri, development director at Family Promise, said that the Continuum of Care for the Homeless group discussed this recently. The group is made up of multiple stakeholders who work in this field and try to coordinate assistance.
“We’ve got to do a better job of making sure that the Downtown Safety Alliance and the police and fire departments know about the work that we do,” Yturri said.
She said that attention to people experiencing homelessness can be a good thing, potentially drumming up support and creating awareness about services that people can access. At the same time, organizers urge the public to avoid broad assertions. For most, homelessness is not a chronic situation or a precursor to criminal activity.
“The vast majority of people experiencing homelessness are not criminals and are not violent criminal offenders,” said Gary Owen, president of United Way of Cascade County and local coordinator for the Continuum of Care group. He said that some estimates say that 10% of that group are considered chronically homeless.
The Continuum of Care’s annual point-in-time count of unsheltered people points to a relatively even number in recent years. The count, conducted in January, registered 217 unhoused people in 2023, 232 in 2024 and 202 in 2025. Yturri said that a locally coordinated spring count last year showed a small increase with the warmer weather.
Yturri and others have made distinctions between the unsheltered population and the more temporary “transient” population. The implication is that the transient population might cause more trouble, but Yturri said that these people also don’t all come from the same situations. Family Promise has a day center that offers showers and laundry and often sees those new faces.
“We do see that more in the summertime, and it’s folks who are living in a camper,” she said. “They’re moving for another job, maybe. And they utilize the services.”
The police department’s press release announcing the summer initiative made multiple references to criminal activity becoming “more frequent” and “a trend that has intensified.” It listed panhandling among the crimes, though panhandling itself is not a criminal offense.
Recent news stories have also described rising crime in the downtown area, but it’s unclear to what extent. A recent KRTV story mentioned that 911 calls downtown have actually decreased in recent years but quoted a police captain who said, “It certainly doesn’t feel that way.”
Given those representations, MTFP requested numbers that might help support those claims, but the city hasn’t provided numbers about criminal activity downtown. Otto, the police captain, told MTFP that there is a usual spring increase in activity but said he didn’t have figures to share. A city spokesperson said that the department may have a report prepared by this week to illustrate some of those trends.
The city’s crime mapping tool, which automatically logs police reports and locations, shows 81 calls in the core downtown area for May compared to 61 in April, 72 in March and 69 in January. The tool shows information from the past 180 days and does not include all police activity.
Others have voiced concerns that aren’t related to criminal activity but affect their businesses. At a June 3 city commission meeting, business owner John Hubbard described the impact on patrons.
“While many individuals experiencing homelessness are not engaged in crimes, the visible signs of poverty, mental health crises and substance abuse can create an unwelcoming atmosphere for our customers,” he said.
Both Yturri and Owen said they support the GFPD’s effort to police criminal activity. Yturri said that in her experience, those officers do a good job dealing with some of the most difficult people.
More broadly, Owen called for compassion. He recalled something former Great Falls city commissioner and state legislator Mary Sheehy Moe told him.
“These aren’t people we need to be afraid of,” Owen said. “These are people we need to be afraid for.”
Photo op
Charles Goodman, community specialist for NeighborWorks Great Falls, gives a tour of the forthcoming Baatz Block apartment building. The tour was part of NeighborWorks Week.
The Baatz Block apartments will be permanent supportive housing geared toward people living on the edge of homelessness. It puts support services like mental health, behavioral care and community assistance on site to help keep residents in a stable environment.
Renovation of the historic downtown building has been ongoing for more than a year and has involved many partner stakeholders and funding sources. Goodman said that they’re aiming for September to start getting people placed in apartments. Resident referrals will be handled by Opportunities, Inc.
Calling all photographers: Submit a photo for Great Falls This Week to [email protected].
Data dive
Great Falls’ elementary schools appeared to struggle in the 2023-2024 school year on the annual schools report card, which is compiled by the Montana Office of Public Instruction.
But that latest snapshot caught the district in the middle of a testing transition, which impacted the results, according to a district official.
The 2023-2024 report card, the latest year available, showed the elementary schools in Great Falls well below statewide averages in math and reading student achievement scores, with no students in the “advanced” category. In previous years, those schools tracked more closely to statewide averages.
Jackie Mainwaring, executive director for student achievement at Great Falls Public Schools, told MTFP that the district was in a pilot program for a new proficiency testing system called Montana Aligned Standards Through-Year assessment or MAST. The new system introduces smaller, periodic tests throughout the school year rather than one big standardized test at the end of the year.
During that pilot year, the concepts in the tests didn’t always align with the timing of the classroom curriculum, Mainwaring said. Sometimes the students were tested on topics that hadn’t yet come up in the classroom. It was just part of ironing out the pilot program.
“As with any test, it’s important that we’re able to teach those kids the concepts prior to testing them,” Mainwaring said.
In addition, the MAST testing system did not have an “advanced” category, which is why no students are labeled as such in the report card, Mainwaring said.
GFPS was one of the few districts that participated in the pilot year. The tests were given to grades 3 through 8. McKenne Gregg, a spokesperson for the Montana Office of Public Instruction, said in an email that the office secured a waiver to exclude pilot districts from “its system of annual meaningful differentiation” in reporting results to the U.S. Department of Education.
“The validity of that data is never great in a pilot,” Mainwaring said.
The 2024-2025 school year was a field test of the MAST system statewide. The next school year will be the first official implementation after receiving feedback from schools. Mainwaring said that the district is supportive of the MAST system and that it will align well with the district’s goals.
Longer-term data for grades 3 through 8 show that math and English proficiency have been slipping slightly since 2015. Mainwaring said that the district has been “heavily” working on math and English learning in recent years.
“We know that we want our students to be achieving at a higher rate than where we are.”
The high school student achievement scores for 2023-2024, which weren’t impacted by a MAST pilot program, showed more students in the “novice” category for math, reading and science proficiency than statewide averages. Slightly more local students were proficient in reading than those statewide, according to the data.
Public notice
The candidate pool for the fall municipal elections is set. Current Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves will run for reelection and face challenger Jasmine Taylor. The position is a two-year term.
Four candidates will compete for two seats on the city commission, which are four-year terms.
Those candidates are incumbent Joe McKenney, Pete Anderson, Mathew Pipinich and Casey Schreiner. There is no primary election for this race. The top two vote recipients on Nov. 4 will take the two at-large seats.
Current city commission member Susan Wolff has opted not to run for reelection.
Current municipal court judge Mark Dunn is the sole candidate to retain his seat. That is a four-year term.
Neighborhood council seats are also up for election this year. Candidates and more election information can be found here.
