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A school assistant also corroborated the student’s claims, and told investigators Collins “grabbed [the student], picked her up, and flipped her to the ground. Once on the ground, Officer Collins put his knee in the student’s back and handcu ed her.” The assistant testifi ed she later saw the student “handcu ed and screaming” on the fl oor of the school security o ce. She asked Collins to remove the handcu s, which he refused to do. She then asked him to leave the school.

CPS investigators determined there was credible evidence to suggest Collins used excessive force, and according to the complaint fi le, in September 2009 the o ce of the CPS chief executive officer sent Collins documents stating that the Board of Education approved firing him. Collins didn’t appear at his dismissal hearing and later told IPRA that he never received notification because CPS sent the letter to the wrong address. He claimed he learned of his dismissal when he attempted to obtain information on his school assignment. Collins says that’s when CPS o ered to reinstate him.

Despite CPS’s findings, IPRA determined that there was insu cient evidence to support the allegations that Collins used excessive force on the student. However IPRA did fi nd him guilty of failing to submit a Tactical Response Report, which o cers are required to submit whenever they use force.

Some of the complaints in Collins’s file included allegations of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

In 2000, a woman who was in her 20s accused Collins of sexually assaulting her beginning when she was eight years old. She signed a form releasing her medical records to the CPD’s Internal A airs Division —since renamed the Bureau of Internal Affairs— which was handling her complaint, and provided a statement. Investigators determined the allegations were unsustained because of insu cient evidence.

In a separate incident in 2000, a woman accused Colins of failing to return her car keys or inventory them after towing her car. She also accused Collins of inappropriately touching her after pulling her over and searching her. After getting bailed out, the woman says Collins o ered her a ride home, entered her home, “made sexual advances and touched her leg in her house.”

Investigators determined there was insufficient evidence to prove that Collins made sexual advances at the woman, but they found that he “unnecessarily made two unexplained visits inside an arrestee’s home,” and that he made false reports when he denied entering her home. Collins was suspended for ten days.

In 2004, according to OPS investigative documents, the mother of Collins’s child was involved in a custody battle with him when she came to Dett Elementary School to pick up their daughter. The complainant had been granted an order of protection and custody of the daughter, who “was to have no contact by any means with Officer Collins.” The woman accused Collins, who had also come to the school to take their daughter home, of physically abusing her by grabbing her by the coat, shoving her, kneeing her on the chest and back, elbowing her on the back, squeezing her head and neck, pushing her to the ground, twisting her arms, handcu ng her too tightly, and then paying witnesses to say the complainant attacked him.

Multiple witnesses testified that the two had been involved in an altercation that became violent. OPS investigators determined that the allegations were either unfounded or not sustained because of insufficient evidence, contrary accounts from witnesses, and because there were “conflicting accounts” as to when Collins was made aware of the order of protection.

Despite racking up dozens of complaints as a police officer by the 2010s, Collins began acting on his aspirations for elected o ce. In 2012, he unsuccessfully ran in the Republican primary for the First U.S. Congressional District, coming in second with 24 percent of the vote.

He then ran for mayor in 2015, but withdrew from the ballot after facing challenges to his petition signatures. The following year he threw his name in the hat for a seat in the 7th U.S. Congressional District, but withdrew before the primary.

Collins’s mayoral campaign website describes him as a “predecessor of what Harold Washington stood for.” His public safety plan includes a promise to “bring back and Implement ‘STOP AND FRISK LAWS’ with the use of new technologies such as police body cameras to insure that there is public ‘TRANSPARENCY AND TRUST.’” He also promises to “remove the useless and destructive policies such as the ‘DO NOT CHASE POLICY’ implemented by the ‘MAYOR LIGHTFOOT’ administration that has severely ‘BLOCKED’ our brave men and women in uniform from e ectively being able to do their job of ‘PROTECTING’ the citizens of this great city.”

Collins denied all the allegations in the 42 complaints against him, including the nine that investigators sustained. “I bet if you look in all 40 of those complaints, there’s no a davit from the complainant,” he said. “You know why? Because they know, if they got found out that they were lying, they could be prosecuted on that a davit. And that’s one of the things as the next mayor of Chicago, if you make a complaint against any city employee, you’re going to have to sign an a davit.”

Beginning in 2004, affidavits were required of witnesses to police misconduct for full investigations to occur, but the SAFE-T Act changed that in 2021 after advocates spent years arguing that the requirement discouraged victims from pursuing complaints against cops.

Of the 42 complaints against Collins, seven were fi led after 2004 and required an a davit, which complainants refused to sign. All seven cases were subsequently closed and no disciplinary action was recommended.

“If there [were proof], I’d be in a court of law,” Collins said about the myriad allegations against him. “I’d already be in the federal penitentiary.” v