By Kelly Rae Robertson
I spent 14.5 years in Allegheny County Pretrial. I sat in the jail. I wrote the bail recommendations.
After the grant money came in, release was the mandate. Our office had to drive down the jail population to satisfy the grants. That meant recommending non-monetary bonds. Get them out. Lower the number. Meet the grant objective. Get the money.
Thursday, a man already charged with breaking into a woman’s home climbed through a window in Edgewood and stabbed Dr. Idris Evans and his wife in their bed. Evans ran pediatric transport at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He’s dead. She’s critical. Their kids are 8 and 12. They ran to a neighbor in the dark.
Elijah Hemingway was arrested in July for a February burglary involving his former partner. According to the criminal complaint, he forced his way into her home while she was dropping a child off at daycare and stole two phones and a laptop. Hemingway was charged with felony burglary and released the next day on a non-monetary bond. Zero dollars. His next court date was October 1. Dr. Evans doesn’t get an October.
I know how Hemingway’s case would have come across my desk because I evaluated cases like it. Residential burglary. Forced entry. An intimate partner. Before the grants, those facts mattered when we made a bail recommendation. After the grants, the priority changed. We were expected to recommend non-monetary bonds and reduce the jail population.
I am not guessing. I wrote those bail recommendations.
MacArthur put millions into Allegheny County with a stated goal: reduce the jail population. The county counted the win in two numbers — fewer monetary bonds and less pretrial detention. Heinz funded bail work in the same system. Our risk assessment was renamed the Arnold Assessment and expanded countywide. The money came with a metric. Reduce the jail population.
We were expected to recommend non-monetary bonds — cashless bonds — because that is how you hit the number. Release was the goal.
When a magistrate went against our recommendation, we went over their head and undid it.
We had a unit in the main office called the Arnold Unit, named after the grant. This was not an exception. It was the rule. When a magistrate rejected our recommendation, the Arnold Unit worked the case up the next morning for us to take to Motions Court and get the non-monetary bond reinstated.
The magistrate was never told that we went over their head and reversed the decision. And when magistrates kept fighting us, it went further. My bosses bullied them off the bench. Magistrates were removed. Their careers and their income were threatened. I watched it happen. The message was clear: fall in line or pay for it.
For seven years, I screamed about this while it was happening. I pointed to specific defendants and said: release this person and someone will die. They were released. They killed. I took it to the media. I wrote presidents, members of Congress, Pennsylvania lawmakers and federal agencies. A year ago, I finally got an FBI agent on the phone. I laid it out for her. She said there was no case. That was it.
I lived this system. Dr. Evans is not the first person whose death followed the release of someone I believed should have been detained. I watched the county count fewer monetary bonds and less pretrial detention as successes. What those numbers never counted were the people killed after defendants were released.
The people who ran this got the next check. Dr. Evans’s kids got a neighbor’s porch in the dark.
I have the emails. I have the letters. I have the records. I kept the evidence.
DOJ: investigate what I spent seven years trying to put in front of the federal government.
Washington: examine the use of non-monetary — cashless — release in every case.
Audit every pretrial agency that received MacArthur jail-reduction funding. Find out how many defendants were released, were later charged with murder, and whether anyone was tracking what happened after release.
For seven years, I tried to get someone to help me stop what I watched this system become. I said people would be killed. They were. I kept sounding the alarm.
Now Dr. Evans is dead. His wife is critically injured. Their children ran from their home in the dark.
I was screaming about this long before their father was killed.
Kelly Rae Robertson is a writer focused on public safety, criminal justice, and government accountability. She spent 14.5 years as a pretrial investigator in Allegheny County. Her work has appeared in The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, American Thinker, and Law Enforcement Today.
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