Great Falls Tribune from Great Falls, Montana • A1

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Great Falls City Commissioner Rick Tryon gave some star- tling statistics about crime in Great Falls during the Jan. 28 commission strategic planning session. He quoted and areavibes.com as his sourc- es, but a deeper dive into those websites reveals that their information is inaccurate and some of its sourcing is suspect. says it gets its information from variety of government and private and warns, ta.com does not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of any information on this site. Use at your own Areavibes.com lists the FBI as its source, but the numbers in its crime breakdown for Great Falls are vastly than those listed on the website.

The biggest in- consistencies were in burglary and property crimes. Areavibes.com reported property crime arrests at three times those reported by the FBI, and its number of burglaries was seven times too high. The website under-reported assaults by 266. The in numbers bring up questions. How reli- able is the data use? How much should they rely on it to drive their decision-making? And do these have a responsibility to the public to present the most accurate information available? Great Falls crime numbers questioned alcohol and said Cascade County Attorney Josh Racki about underlying causes of crime in Great Falls.

do I have a crime of any kind that involve that on some PHOTOS BY RION FALLS TRIBUNE City commissioner defends data presented from websites Great Falls City Commissioner Rick Tryon, right, quoted crime statistics at a Jan. 28 planning session. Traci Rosenbaum and Nicole Girten Great Falls Tribune USA TODAY NETWORK Violent crime in Great Falls has been on the rise since 2015, but there was a slight drop from 2018 to 2019. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION See CRIME, Page 3A The Downtown Development Part- nership proposed three Tax Incre- ment Financing (TIF) Programs to the city commission at a work session meeting Tuesday evening. The proposal of these programs is a result of a request from the commis- sion for the DDP to look at expanding the use of TIF funds that is similar to development funding done in other cities like Missoula and Billings.

The three programs would address bring- ing buildings up to code, external fa- cade improvements and increased se- curity. The commission approved a $6 million bond issue to the facade of the Civic Center and will pay the The Great Falls Civic Center has had facade issues for some time. A new allocation of TIF funds aims to change that. KARL PUCKETT 3 programs proposed to help revitalize downtown Nicole Girten Great Falls Tribune USA TODAY NETWORK See PROGRAMS, Page 7A The issue of crime in Great Falls was brought up at the end of a work session and formal meeting of the city commission Tuesday night. At the end of the second formal meeting, tones shifted in reaction to the publication of the Tribune investigation into the crime statistics Commissioner Rick Tryon referenced in his initial proposal for the blue ribbon panel.

Commissioner Mary Moe introduced the topic again to apologize for comments she made in last strategic planning session and reiterated her apology in a document sent to the Tribune. comment about growing criminals was an inelegant one. The point I was trying to make if you treat substance abuse as a crime, the children of those abusers are much more likely to fall into the same pattern of addiction, unem- ployment, and crime got lost. Apologize Moe wrote. In the meeting Moe then addressed the issue brought up in the Tribune investigation saying, referring to the data available on commercial websites and noting that crime statistics are easy to Tryon responded saying that he also received feedback on the nature of the statistics he presented in the meeting last week and followed that with his explanation for why he in- corporated them.

was not presenting those as FBI stats. I was presenting that information and that data to illustrate what others are Tryon said. just want to make it clear that it was not my contention that those were the authority and end-all data presented on those commercial sites, but that is what Commission discusses statistics in reaction to investigation See COMMISSION, Page 3A Nicole Girten Great Falls Tribune USA TODAY NETWORK The state posted 437 new CO- VID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing total to 94,810 reports. Of the total cases, 90,086 are re- covered and 3,421 remain active. There are 121 people who are now hos- pitalized out of 4,307 total hospital- izations, according to the state web- site covid19.mt.gov.

Montana added 54 deaths since Tuesday, bringing the total to 1,303 fa- talities related to the respiratory ill- ness. the pandemic, DPHHS has worked with local juris- dictions on data reconciliation re- garding death wrote a spokesperson with the Montana De- partment of Public Health and Hu- man Services in an email Wednesday. this point, catching up on this work, and so starting to see large daily increases in reported Of the 54 deaths reported on Wednesday, 47 of them were reported in Yellowstone County. These deaths did not occur over the course of one day, but rather over a longer period of Montana reports 437 new COVID-19 cases Skylar Rispens Great Falls Tribune USA TODAY NETWORK See COVID-19, Page 7A.