MISSOULA – The rivers were filled with people recreating on them this weekend and law enforcement has allocated some resources to help manage river access sites and activity on the water.
The Missoula County Sheriff’s Office reports they only had one disturbance call on the river over the weekend, but parking continued to be an issue.
The Sheriff’s Office — along with Fish Wildlife and Parks, the Montana Department of Transportation and the county roads department — has been working on new signage in high traffic areas to alert people of where they can and cannot park.
People are advised to pay attention to the signage that has information on what regulations there are for bridges — and jumping off them into the river.
River activity demands more attention from Sheriff’s deputies and luckily for them, some reinforcements are on the way.
“With the river safety patrol we do the best that we can and we have people coming in to backfill those positions to make sure that we are monitoring doing the best we can to monitor,” Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Brenda Bassett said.
“But we just don’t have the manpower. That’s why we are so excited that we will have those additional positions coming in to help in that.”
Bassett says that if you need to report a car illegally parked near one of the accesses or put in sites that you can call the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office non-emergency line at (406) 258-4810.
