'Touchy-feely' cop accused of 'groping' women, sloppy drunkenness keeps landing jobs in law enforcement

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Rural Illinois near the Indiana border, about an hour south of the bright lights of Chicago, is dotted with small cities with the hometown feel for which the Midwest is well known. With small populations and low crime, police officers in these areas are familiar faces who are revered for their service to their community.

But in this region is at least one cop, Officer Quincy Spears, who has bounced around from department to department, carving out a lengthy career in law enforcement in spite of a troubling track record that dates back decades.

'He's a bad person, and he shouldn't be wearing a badge.'

Internal affairs investigations at Watseka Police Department, where Spears is still believed to be employed, seem to have escalated since Blaze News began looking into complaints against Spears in early September.

In response to public records requests, the City of Watseka told Blaze News on September 4 that its police department did "not have any complaints against Officer Spears." The city reiterated on October 9 that the police department did "not have any email communications regarding Quincy Spears" and that he had "no disciplinary records" there.

By October 29, the city had discovered email complaints and incident reports about Spears that it sent along to Blaze News, and WCIA had reported that "multiple" Watseka police officers were under investigation by the Illinois State Police. While Police Chief Eric Starkey declined to identify the officers involved, he confirmed to WCIA that they have been on leave since July.

Screenshot of letter sent to Blaze News

A public records request to Watseka asking for Spears' work-related gas receipts through October 24 revealed that Spears had been submitting receipts for his patrol work regularly until September 28, when the submissions abruptly stopped.

Despite the breadth of accusations against him, Quincy Spears did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Blaze News.

Who is Quincy Spears?

Quincy Spears is a 47-year-old native son of this area, born in Kankakee, Illinois, according to an application he completed for the Manteno Police Department in March 2006, and currently living in Momence, about 10 miles east of Kankakee. Spears married in 2002, and he and his wife have at least two children.

Spears began his career in law enforcement "right after" he graduated high school in 1997, he wrote on the Manteno application.

'Ptlm. Spears Incidents'

That career got off to a rough start. Spears admitted on the application that he had been "asked to resign" from his job as a corrections officer at the Kankakee County Detention Center after less than a year "for horseplaying on the job."

Since that brief stint at the correctional facility, Spears has worked either part-time or full-time for police departments in four different Illinois municipalities: Grant Park, population 1,300; Momence, population 3,100; Manteno, population 9,200; and most recently, Watseka, population 4,700.

The vast majority of that time, more than 15 years, was spent with the Manteno Police Department, according to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board.

The accusations against Spears are rather wide-ranging and start from his earliest years as an officer. In 2005, he ignored direct instructions from his supervisor and administered a breathalyzer test on a subject who "did not appear at all intoxicated and was cooperating fully," according to a report that appeared to be signed by the then-chief of Momence PD.

According to another document titled "Ptlm. Spears Incidents," believed to have been created by Manteno PD, Spears:

hit a parked car just before 1 a.m. in February 2008,
had a "dog bite" incident at his residence in February 2012,
"blew" a stop sign in front of a fellow officer on an "unknown date and time,"
and was involved in two disturbances and one alleged "fight" at various bars while off duty.

Screenshot of police documents

'Without her consent'

Perhaps the most alarming accusations against Spears relate to his treatment of women. Blaze News first learned of Spears after a father in Momence reached out to express concerns about Spears' alleged harassment of his daughter.

Though nearly 30 years old, the man's daughter has special needs, and Spears, a fellow Momence resident, routinely makes comments to her while she walks to and from work that make her "uncomfortable," the man explained to Blaze News.

'On several occasions,' Spears 'placed his hands between her legs near her vagina,' one woman claimed.

"He drives by in his golf cart and, you know, wolf-whistles and harasses and yells her nickname at her all the time and basically does not leave her alone," said the father, who asked not to be named.

The father indicated that his daughter does not have the wherewithal to defend herself against this alleged treatment. "She just kind of puts her head down and keeps walking," he said. When the father confronted Spears about the comments, Spears "laughed it off," the man recalled. "He thought I was joking."

The father noted that while these alleged instances occur while Spears is off duty, his daughter knows Spears and recognizes him as a police officer.

Heather Freinkel/Getty Images

To the best of the father's knowledge, Spears' alleged comments to his daughter, while unwelcome, have never been sexually explicit or crossed the line into inappropriate physical contact. Other women in the area have told a different story.

In a report filed with Manteno PD on March 7, 2018, two adult sisters told officers that Spears had repeatedly touched them inappropriately under the guise of affectionate friendliness.

On "numerous occasions," Spears had "placed his hands on her breasts and buttocks without her consent," one woman said, according to the report. She claimed he does so "in a joking manner ... often while hugging, greeting, or approaching her." She estimated he had done so "at least 100 times over the past several years."

When he touches her rear end, Spears "doesn't just put his hands on it but puts it [as] deep and low in between her legs as he can," she claimed.

Her sister added that "on several occasions," Spears "placed his hands between her legs near her vagina," the report said. Both women claimed they asked Spears to stop, but the behavior continued.

The first sister also insisted she had seen Spears similarly "groping" other women, sometimes with "their husband or boyfriend" standing nearby. Though the men objected, Spears "uses his status as a police officer to intimidate or deter them from taking it any further," she claimed.

Despite their apparent discomfort with Spears, the women declined to file a formal complaint, telling officers they "did not want him to lose his job and cause problems for his family." Their allegations were first raised by a concerned uncle.

The "Ptlm. Spears Incidents" document also mentions a "battery call" to the department made after Spears allegedly "was kissing a women [sic] on the neck and she burnt him with a cigarette and ended up punching him." According to the incident report, Spears had called the police but later declined to press charges. The female involved was described in the report as one of Spears' "family members."

Momence Mayor Chuck Steele, who has known Spears for more than 30 years, described Spears as "touchy-feely" with women and said he would never hire Spears for the Momence department under any circumstances. "He's a bad person, and he shouldn't be wearing a badge," Steele told Blaze News.

'Allegedly intoxicated and exhibiting obnoxious behavior'

Spears' file is also filled with reports of disturbing behavior related to alcohol consumption and public intoxication.

The "Ptlm. Spears Incidents" document mentioned above references a bar "fight" on February 27, 2010. Even though no physical altercation appears to have taken place that night, Spears' behavior before and after the alleged "fight" nonetheless infuriated cops.

Spears was 'unprofessional and hostile toward both the clerk and the cook who had prepared his order' because of an apparent 'dispute over a coupon,' the attendant claimed.

Hours before the bar "fight" incident, Spears called off sick for a shift that was scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. the following day. When the sergeant on duty arrived at the bar about the "fight" at about 1:15 a.m., less than five hours before Spears' scheduled shift, he saw Spears "drinking alcohol" and speaking "with slurred speech and appear[ing] to be intoxicated," the sergeant documented.

Even though he was supposed to be sick, Spears pled his case about his role in the alleged "fight," claiming that a white male "aggressor" at the bar had insulted Manteno police as "a bunch of p**sies" and called him the N-word, the sergeant reported.

A short time later, after the sergeant had left to attend to a different case, Spears called the sergeant and insisted on reporting for his scheduled shift. After some back-and-forth, the sergeant eventually had to threaten Spears with a breathalyzer before Spears agreed not to come in.

ANGHI/Getty Images

The "Ptlm. Spears Incident" document, likely drawn up by Manteno PD, also alleged Spears had called his police chief "while in a ditch drunk," had "called numerous officers highly intoxicated while off-duty," and even that he had his firearm owner's identification "suspended" at an unknown date and time after he was transported to the hospital because he was "extremely intoxicated and ... Suicidal."

Spears was also involved in off-duty incidents at bars in December 2023 and January 2024, according to documents from Watseka PD.

Then on January 27, 2025, a gas station attendant approached a Momence cop who happened to be pumping gas to report an incident involving Spears. The attendant recalled that Spears arrived to pick up a food order in an "allegedly highly intoxicated state" and proceeded to cause "a scene," the cop wrote in the "Incident Report Involving off duty Officer Spears Quincy."

Spears was "unprofessional and hostile toward both the clerk and the cook who had prepared his order" because of an apparent "dispute over a coupon," the attendant claimed, according to the cop's summary.

The attendant further claimed that it "was not the first time" Spears had entered the store "allegedly intoxicated and exhibiting obnoxious behavior," the report said.

'You have some racist black people'

None of the many troubling allegations mentioned above prompted the disciplinary hearing that resulted in Spears' voluntary resignation from the Manteno Police Department after 15 years on the force.

The two incidents that did lead to the hearing involved his interactions with fellow officers.

'I never felt more discriminated on in my entire life as a black man.'

The first occurred on December 17, 2020, when a sheriff's deputy confronted an off-duty Spears outside his home after the deputy reportedly witnessed Spears speeding and failing to signal.

The situation escalated quickly, with Spears demanding to know, "Do you know who I am?" and the deputy warning that the situation could turn into a traffic stop if Spears "continued to talk to [him] that way," according to the deputy's statement. Tensions seemed to dissipate a bit after Spears mentioned he was a Manteno officer, and the deputy ultimately left without recording anything or filing an initial report since it was not an official traffic stop.

Spears, however, did not drop the incident. Instead, he called Sgt. Andy Mackin, the Manteno midnight shift supervisor, at around 3 the next morning, more than four hours later, to complain about the deputy's behavior, and the two spoke for "approx. three hours," according to Mackin's statement.

Mackin noted that Spears said "multiple times" that he wanted the deputy "fired" for his actions, which Spears claimed amounted to racial profiling.

"I never felt more discriminated on in my entire life as a black man as that frickin' day there," Spears railed during the April 2021 disciplinary hearing, which can be heard in full here. "That's one of the reasons why African Americans do not complain about the police because of crap like that."

Though Manteno Chief Alan Swinford noted at the hearing that the deputy involved is also black, Spears was not deterred, replying: "Chief, you have some racist black people as well when it comes to [the] African-American community, as we all know."

Screenshot of photo featuring Officer Quincy Spears and a K-9 officer on the Grant Park Police Department Facebook page

Despite admitting during the hearing that he hoped someone would train the deputy on "how to properly talk to people," Spears vehemently denied calling for the deputy to be fired, decrying Mackin's statement that he had as "a bald-face lie."

The second incident that led to his departure from Manteno PD related to apparent attempts to use his status as a police officer to influence a case involving a friend who had been pulled over for an alleged DUI in March 2021. Spears contacted the deputy involved in the stop as well as other law enforcement personnel to see whether he might convince them "to reduce or drop charges" against his friend, Manteno PD claimed in the notice of allegations.

"Quincy asked if there ... was anything I could do to help [redacted] out, since he was his guy," the deputy wrote in a statement.

During the disciplinary hearing, Spears repeatedly insisted he could not "recall" mentioning anything about the "charges" his friend may have been facing to any of the involved personnel.

Manteno PD did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

'Not representative of a professional police officer'

Spears resigned from Manteno PD effective June 30, 2021. By November of that year, Spears had already landed a full-time job with the Watseka Police Department.

Momence Mayor Chuck Steele told Blaze News that he spoke with the then-mayor of Watseka to warn him about Spears before the police department hired him. "Don't even think about putting him in as chief or even anything," Steele recalled saying. "I said, 'I'd be afraid to have him. You're going to end up in lawsuits.'"

It seems Mayor Steele was right as Spears' behavior did not appear to change.

In December 2023, Spears walked into Momence PD, asking for a job application. When the officer on duty, Sgt. Jeffrey Crocker, directed him to the online application portal, Spears became incensed, contacting Mayor Steele and two city aldermen to complain about Crocker's alleged mistreatment of him.

'I have no legal basis for disciplining his off-duty conduct.'

According to statements given to Momence Police Chief Patrick Siemsen, Spears told Mayor Steele that Sgt. Crocker appeared "pissed off that he had to deal with" him and treated him "like a piece of s**t, like a second-class citizen."

Then-Alderman Romel Huddleston, who is black, told Chief Siemsen that Spears had approached him at a bar two days after the incident and accused Sgt. Crocker of racism. Spears "was attempting to play the 'Race Card' and gain sympathy," Huddleston indicated, according to Siemsen.

Spears also interrupted another alderman out on a date to lodge similar complaints about Crocker, Siemsen reported. Spears then apparently scribbled his version of events on a yellow legal pad and gave it to the alderman. A copy of that note was included in Siemsen's report.

The note, aptly described as "difficult to understand," is believed to read: "Tom I went in to apply I talked to Crocker he was so unprofessional, look at his body cam. This might hurt me to be a officer."

Screenshot of incident report

Frustrated with the man-hours and expense associated with investigating Spears' allegations of mistreatment, Siemsen filed a formal complaint with the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, accusing Spears of "knowingly and intentionally" making "a false complaint" against Crocker.

"Mr. Spears' conduct and behavior was egregious, highly unprofessional, unethical, and not representative of a professional police officer," Siemsen wrote.

Jeremy Douglas, then the Watseka police chief, seemingly shrugged his shoulders, claiming that Spears' comments were a matter of "opinion" and therefore "protected by the First Amendment." "I have no legal basis for disciplining his off-duty conduct," Douglas wrote Siemsen in a letter reviewed by Blaze News.

Huddleston did not respond to a request for comment.

Blaze News sent Watseka PD a series of questions about the vetting process associated with hiring Spears and officials' level of awareness regarding the allegations against him. We also called and left a message following the news report about the officers under investigation. The department did not respond.

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