Just before Thanksgiving, the folks at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights shut down their “mass bailout” scheme, having fallen far short of their goals. But why did they stop?
In what Kerry Kennedy, RFK’s president, now calls an “experiment,” the charity set out to spring 500 inmates, all women or males under 19 — regardless of their records, the charges against them or any other reason why they needed to post bail to leave jail.
In the end, RFK says it sprang just 105 of them, 64 women and 41 teen boys, the youngest age 16. It’s not saying why it stopped there.
It’s possible that Kennedy belatedly started buying the public-safety concerns raised by Mayor de Blasio, Police Commissioner James O’Neill and some city DAs. After all, 92 percent of RFK’s beneficiaries were being held on felony charges.
Or perhaps the charity started to worry about the “clients” who went missing.
RFK arranged for social workers to connect the newly freed with assorted services, and gave out cellphones and two-month MetroCards to ensure they could contact their lawyers, make court dates and get to other appointments. Yet The Post established that at least four RFK “clients” missed their court dates.
Violent ex-con Ralphie Myree didn’t show in court on Oct. 24, was re-arrested on Nov. 19 and is now being held on $500,001 bail at Rikers.
Rickeem Parker, the teen who beat a Rikers guard before being bailed out by the charity ($1,500), also vanished on the day he was to face the judge.
In other cases, an RFK lawyer reports, one bailee was rearrested on a nonviolent-misdemeanor charge, while another stopped responding to her lawyer. Three more were re-arrested on outstanding warrants.
Then, too, the money was starting to run out: Posting bail from $750 to $100,000 in just 105 cases, RFK spent $1.2 million out of the $2 million raised for the project.
Was that just bad budgeting, or did the high-profile effort fail to bring donations flooding in, as RFK’s leaders likely hoped?
Whatever went wrong, count it as an abject lesson in the pitfalls of pursuing “social justice” via celebrity stunts.
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