Cop Walks in spite of 36 costs and eight girls Accusing Him of On-obligation Sexual assault

 Last year, not one, not two, but eight different women came forward and accused former Wilkes-Barre policeman Robert Collins of sexually assaulting them while he was on duty. Collins was first arrested in January 2019 and again in June of 2019 after state police gathered enough evidence of the repeated sexual assaults. Despite these allegations, however, Collins recently walked free.

“This cost me my career. I should still be a Wilkes-Barre law officer,” said Collins, 55, who retired in February 2019, a month after state police accused him of sexually assaulting women while on duty. “You don’t know what I've got more established for the past 19 months. Ridiculous. I and my family have seasoned hell.”

Prosecutors accused Collins of using his badge to sexually assault the ladies under the threat of jail. He was accused of pulling them over and bringing them to dark areas so raping them under duress.

As Citizensvoice.com reports, throughout the trial, the prosecution portrayed Collins as a methodical predator who targeted vulnerable women and used his position of authority to take advantage of them. After detaining the ladies for minor offenses like drug possession or traffic violations, Collins brought them to secluded locations and threatened them with jail if they didn’t conform to perform sex acts on him, Senior Deputy Attorney General Bernard Anderson alleged.

“You can visit a jail or be sure of this,” Anderson quoted Collins as saying.

The defense, however, was ready to successfully convince the jury that these women had launched a smear campaign against Collins, claiming that they were after money and had filed lawsuits.

But this was simply a misrepresentation and not the particular truth. None of the ladies knew one another and not one in every one of them filed a lawsuit once they made their original complaints. Instead, lawyers found the ladies, only after the media began reporting on Collins’ arrest.

“After this hit the press, the lawyers descended,” Anderson said. “The lawyers visited them.”

Nevertheless, the jury bought the defense’s case and moved to acquit the officer.

It is important to signify that even the vilest of accused criminals deserve the correct to due process of law and a good trial to exonerate them. However, we'd be remiss if we didn’t imply the matter of blue privilege within the court systems — especially when it involves sex offending cops and particularly in Wilkes-Barre.

As The PBWW website has consistently reported, law enforcement officials, whether or not they’re caught on video committing against the law, are rarely punished to the identical standards the general public which they’re sworn to safeguard are held to.

Gerald Cookus, another twenty-year veteran of the Wilkes-Barre local department, was sentenced to simply 3 months in prison for admittedly molesting an 8-year-old girl at his aim Wilkes-Barre.

Cookus, who was working as a greeter at the varsity called the Solomon Plains Education Center, was seen by the victim’s mom hugging the victim in an exceedingly way that aroused her suspicions. Upon further investigation, it had been discovered Cookus had molested the girl because, in his words, he felt like she liked it.

According to WNEP News, “Court papers show he admitted to police he touched the girl inappropriately because he believed she thought it felt good.” And for this admission, he received a slam on the wrist.

There is more.

As we reported at the time, the headline read “Ex-Dupont peace officer sentenced to prison for the corruption of a minor” but former Dupont Borough peace officer, David Turkos, 44, never spent a complete day within a jail cell for raping two young boys. Dupont could be a town neighboring Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne county. Judge Michael T. Vough sentenced Turkos to 9-23 months, at Luzerne County Correctional Facility, but the previous officer was immediately eligible for work release.

For those unfamiliar, work release allows a prisoner to travel to employment during the day and only should sleep nights in jail. it's essentially state-funded housing.

Turkos was charged in 2015 with three counts of involuntary deviate gender with a toddler, two counts of indecent assault, and a count of easy assault. However, he only pleaded guilty to 2 counts of corruption of minors. The plea deal was accepted by Vough and therefore the more serious felony rest counts were withdrawn — a typical and customary privilege afforded to the skinny blue line, even for the vilest of offenders.

The apply the wrist sentences for former cops who have engaged in criminal sexuality has now become so commonplace it borders on the sting of being comical—if it weren’t so horrific.