Denver cop resigns as new misconduct emerges

A Denver police officer who kept his job seven years ago despite paying a prostitute and attempting to date a sexual assault victim resigned in January after an internal investigation found he made up a reason to visit a woman’s home late at night and sent inappropriate texts to her friend after meeting the two women while on duty.

Officer Zachery Phillips resigned on Jan. 2 with 21 years on the job after narrowly avoiding termination in 2017 for the prior misconduct, according to documents provided to The Denver Post on Friday in response to an open records request.

In the most recent incident, Phillips met two women, who were friends, in February 2023 after one of the women called 911 to report that a stranger at a Rino bar appeared to have been drugged. Both women’s names were redacted from the documents provided to The Post.

Dispatchers gave Phillips the 911 caller’s home address because they initially thought she had gone home and wanted the officer to meet her there, according to the internal affairs file. He instead met the women at a different bar nearby, where Phillips took their information, including the friend’s phone number.

A month later, in March 2023, the woman who called 911 was asleep at home near East 23rd Avenue and Gilpin Street when she woke to a light shining in her window at about 9:45 p.m. Thinking someone was trying to break in, she called 911. She then spotted a lone police officer — Phillips — standing on her porch, holding the screen door open, according to the internal affairs documents.

Phillips told the woman that he was responding to a call about shots fired in the area, and asked if she’d heard anything.

But there was no such call, internal affairs investigators found. After asking her a few questions, Phillips left and returned to his police car.

The woman, who recognized Phillips from the bar incident, was so concerned after the interaction — she also said she saw a police car with its lights off pass by her house about an hour later — that she called the city to inquire as to whether Phillips was a “real officer” and then spent the rest of the night at a friend’s house.

“Alarming regularity” of drive-bys

Internal affairs investigators later found that Phillips, who was assigned to the area where the woman lived, passed by her house on about 43% of his shifts before meeting the woman at the call for the drugged stranger. After that call, he drove past her house on 22 of 28 shifts — 78% of his shifts, sometimes multiple times per shift, the investigators found.

On the night of the drugging call, he passed by the woman’s home four times between 10:13 p.m. and 2:22 a.m., despite having no calls for service in that area, the investigation found. The middle-of-the-night drivebys happened with “alarming regularity” after that, the investigation found.

Phillips also texted the woman’s friend after getting her number during the drugging call. The friend told police she ignored the officer’s first text, which was something like, “Hey,” or “Hey you,” and that he followed up a couple days later with a text that said, “Hey hottie, you ever going to text me back?”

The friend dismissed the messages as harmless until Phillips showed up at the other woman’s house, according to the internal affairs file.

“She feared Officer Phillips was going to show up at her house because she never responded to his text message, and because he could possibly locate her address with her phone number,” the report reads.

When questioned, Phillips lied about his interactions with the women during the drugging call, and said the text to the friend was supposed to say “Hey Holly,” not “Hey hottie.” He blamed autocorrect for the error. The woman’s name was not Holly.

He did not turn on his body-worn camera when he visited the woman’s home for the fake call in March 2023, and although he claimed he’d also contacted her neighbors about the supposed gunshots, investigators found that was not the case.

Phillips, who resigned while the internal affairs investigation was ongoing, could not be reached for comment Friday.

“Exactly my fear”

Phillips was previously disciplined in 2017 for paying a prostitute $40, spending the night in bed with her and then briefly dating her. Normally, that’s a fireable offense, but Denver police leadership at the time decided to give him a second chance because of his previously exemplary career.

He accepted a 15-day suspension and agreed that he would be fired if he had another disciplinary infraction within a 12-month span, from September 2017 to September 2018.

What officials didn’t know at the time was that Phillips also had tried to date a sexual assault victim he met on the job in 2016. The woman did not complain about the relationship until February 2018, just outside the one-year window for automatic termination.

Phillips was suspended for two days for the inappropriate relationship and was not otherwise disciplined, raising concern among Denver advocates and activists at the time. Phillips also was investigated by internal affairs in January 2023 for violating the department’s bodyworn camera policy. He received an oral reprimand, police records show.

The sexual assault survivor, who The Denver Post is not identifying for privacy reasons, said Friday that Phillips’ resignation was “karma in its purest form.”

“But I also feel really bad for these women because they never should have been subjected to that behavior, because Phillips should have been fired,” she said.

Lisa Calderon, executive director of Women’s Uprising, said Friday that she helped advocate for the sexual assault survivor in 2018.

“We got a lot of excuses as to why that was appropriate punishment and why his case wouldn’t be reopened,” she said. “And this was exactly my fear back then, which is, him being a repeat offender… The message that was conveyed by Denver police leadership is a slap on the wrist, don’t do it again. Well, he did it again.”

In a statement Friday, Denver Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Kelly Jacobs called Phillips’ actions “reprehensible” and said he “clearly abused his position as a police officer.”

“As there were different decisionmakers in the Department of Safety in 2017, we cannot speak to the reasons behind the prior disciplinary decision,” the statement said.

“However, we recognize the concerns with the former officer’s prior conduct and remain committed to continually reviewing disciplinary standards to ensure that individuals who are not suitable to be police officers do not continue to work for the Denver Police Department.”