S.F. parolee accused of killing 2 pedestrians was free despite several recent arrests
A driver accused by police of killing two pedestrians in downtown San Francisco on New Year’s Eve while intoxicated and in a stolen car is a parolee who remained free despite being arrested several times in the city in recent months, according to city officials and public records.
Troy Ramon McAlister, a 45-year-old city resident who was released on April 10 from a state prison sentence for robbery, was not charged with new crimes by the District Attorney’s Office after any of last year’s arrests, the most recent of which occurred on Dec. 20.
District Attorney Chesa Boudin said his office opted instead to refer each case to state parole agents, who can seek to imprison those who violate the terms of their release.
“We referred these cases to parole because we believed there was a greater likelihood of him being held accountable and having the kind of intervention that would protect the public and break this cycle of recidivism,” Boudin said.
He later acknowledged that “clearly, it was a mistake to think parole supervision would be adequate.”
In a statement late Friday, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs parole, pointed to prosecutors’ repeated decision not to file charges.
“Our top priority is public safety and we will work with our local partners on this unfortunate incident,” the statement said. “None of the parolee’s arrests following his 2020 release have yet to result in filings of criminal charges by the District Attorney. Our parole office followed all procedures after these incidents, including conducting investigations and making appropriate referrals for the individual.
Under California law, people accused of violating parole can be given added restrictions, treatment or punishment by parole officers. They have a right to a hearing in front of a judge and, if their parole is revoked, can spend a maximum of 180 days behind bars. Boudin said that parole officers did not hold McAlister “for a single day” after the Dec. 20 arrest, though it’s not clear what happened in the other cases.
Prosecutors deciding whether to file a new charge — rather than enter parole proceedings — may weigh the strength of the new case, as well as whether the defendant will be released by a judge while the case is pending, and the potential punishment from a conviction.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott called the deaths a “senseless tragedy that shouldn’t have happened.”
While he didn’t refer to Boudin or the District Attorney’s Office by name, Scott made his displeasure clear when he commended officers for the work they have done “to arrest and hold this individual responsible for his criminal conduct.”
The Police Department takes responsibility “whenever we fall short of expectations,” Scott said. “That’s an approach every element of our criminal justice system needs to embrace. We must all be held equally accountable for the decisions we make, because they can have serious implications for the safety of those we serve.”
The deaths of the two pedestrians appeared certain to escalate tension between Boudin, a former public defender working to reform how authorities punish and rehabilitate offenders, and critics who say the city is less safe because he is not holding criminals accountable.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified one of the crash victims Friday as Elizabeth Platt, 60. Her city of residence is unknown.
KPIX-TV indentified the second victim as Hanako Abe, 27, a graduate of the University of Central Arkansas who moved to San Francisco in recent years to work as an analyst at the commercial real estate services company JLL.
Police said McAlister was driving a gray Honda that had been reported stolen in Daly City on Tuesday. According to officers, McAlister was speeding down Mission Street toward the Embarcadero at about 4 p.m. when he ran a red light at Second Street, struck a gray Ford and then the two pedestrians.
After the wreck, officials said, McAlister got out of the vehicle and fled into a nearby commercial building, where officers, assisted by a witness, found him within minutes and detained him. Inside the vehicle, they found a handgun with an extended magazine and suspected drugs.
San Francisco jail records show McAlister was booked late Thursday onsuspicion of a raft of charges, including two counts of voluntary manslaughter, possession of a stolen vehicle, leaving the scene of an accident, burglary, driving while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, driving while addicted to drugs, possessing a gun and a large-capacity ammunition magazine, and violating the terms of parole.
One of the victims died at the scene, and the second victim died after being taken to San Francisco General Hospital, police said.
The streets around the crash were sealed off to traffic for hours as investigators interviewed witnesses and gathered evidence. The stolen Honda was seen partially on the curb and bike lane, its airbags blown.
Police Cmdr. Raj Vaswani told The Chronicle that the motorist whose car was struck was not badly injured.
Court documents show McAlister was arrested in July 2015 on suspicion of robbing a San Francisco store with a gun. While in jail awaiting trial, he filed a federal lawsuit against three city officers, alleging they used excessive force during the arrest. The officers alleged McAlister was combative and high on methamphetamine, and “had to be restrained” at the Mission District police station, records show. A judge dismissed the case.
In a sworn deposition in that case, McAlister said he had three prior felony convictions, including one for robbery and another for attempted carjacking.
McAlister has been on parole for the past nine months, and his term was set to end on Nov. 15, 2022.
Records show that on the night of Nov. 6, the San Francisco State University Police Department arrested McAlister on suspicion of auto burglary,possessing burglary tools and violating the terms of parole at the Towers at Centennial Square, a student housing complex.
On Dec. 20, records show, San Francisco police arrested McAlister on suspicion of car theft and possessing stolen property, methamphetamine, burglary tools and drug paraphernalia.
McAlister has been arrested in San Francisco on other occasions since being paroled, officials said, but details of those cases were not immediately available.
Boudin said in an interview that his office did not file new charges in the cases because parole officials have “more leverage” than the District Attorney’s Office to keep a person in custody for nonviolent charges. He said parole officers have “much deeper knowledge of the individual and the challenges that are leading to that criminal behavior than my office is able to obtain.”
After each case, Boudin said, “we evaluated the facts, the strength of the case and the charges, and decided it was more likely that he would be held accountable through parole.”
Changes, though, are coming, he promised.
“We will make changes to ensure that people on parole receive the supervision and structure needed from parole to prevent this kind of tragedy from recurring,” Boudin said in a tweet Friday. “This is a terrible tragedy and awful end to a brutal year. It is a system failure that resulted in irreversible harm to two families. My heart goes out to the families of the victims.”
Some of Boudin’s peers questioned his office’s approach in dealing with an alleged serial offender. Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said it’s “very concerning” to see several arrests without a prosecution.
Rockne Harmon, a retired Alameda County senior deputy district attorney, noted that it is not parole officers’ responsibility to make charging decisions. “When they see you’re not charging the case,” he said of parole officers, “they interpret that as it’s not prosecutable.”
Harmon said of the McAlister case: “You see this pattern — at some point, if you care about the public, you say this isn’t working.”
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