Catch and release through the court system: Toilolo nabbed again

By
Suzanne Downing
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5
More than 150 cars have been reported stolen in Anchorage since Jan. 1, 2018. This map shows where those reports came from.

Saliloimanatu Toilolo is back on the street again, released by a court order this week.

On Oct. 26, she was apprehended by Anchorage police in a stolen silver 2003 Cadillac Escalade in the 1300 block of West 44th Avenue in Anchorage. The vehicle had been sought by officers for weeks.

On pursuit, the SUV sped off in the direction of Midtown. Shane Muse, the driver, drove recklessly throughout the Midtown area and police Officers located the vehicle in the 900 block of East 20th Avenue. But the driver took off again.

Police attempted to block the SUV and the driver, Shane Muse,  rammed the police vehicles in an attempt to evade arrest. Officers arrested driver Muse, 28, and passengers Crystal Tui, 24 and Saliloimanatu Toilolo, 32. They faced multiple charges including vehicle theft 1 and vehicle theft 2.

Toilolo soon was out and back to her old ways. So was driver Muse — released by the judge after being charged with numerous Class C felonies in this case and prior felony charges relating to an arrest a month earlier.

Last week Toilolo was arrested again after being spotted driving a blue 2009 Honda CRV. She was speeding west on Mountain View Drive, when police activated their patrol car lights to stop her. She slowed down, but then sped off again and  tried to outrun the police. While turning onto Concrete Street, the Honda slid into a wall and Toilolo was arrested.

As it turns out, that car had been stolen during a residential burglary on New Year’s Eve in south Anchorage.

But the license plate came from a different car: a Chevy Tahoe that was stolen before Thanksgiving in west Anchorage.

Toilolo was charged in January with first-degree vehicle theft and failing to stop at the direction of an officer, and she was booked.

Anchorage police labeled her a repeat-offender.

But according to state records, she has since been released until her court hearing next week.
Toilolo had been through the Department of Corrections’ new risk assessment process, part of the SB 91 criminal justice reform law passed two years ago that has created a catch-and-release system meant to keep prison population down and keep basically good people from becoming hardened criminals by associating with other hardened criminals in jail.
In practice, the risk assessment matrix scores the defendants on a scale of 1 to 10 on the likelihood of reoffending. And yet, only a score of 10 keeps them in jail.
We don’t know what score Toilolu was given (although that’s discoverable in her file), but it was apparently between 1 and 9.
Pro tip: Keep your car locked, just in case the pre-trial assessment tool was wrong.