For Phillips, these incidents weren't isolated. In 2017, he was disciplined rather than sacked after paying for the services of a prostitute. A year later, Phillips got into trouble again, this time for harassing a sexual assault victim with unwanted romantic overtures. But the second offense earned Phillips just a two-days-without-pay order.
Phillips's most recent violations "aren't surprising," says the sexual assault victim, referred to by the initials TC in a 2022 Westword cover story. "This is somebody who has had a series of disturbing behavior, and these women should never have been subjected to that kind of abuse." And they wouldn't have been, she adds, if the DPD had fired the officer for what he did to her.
TC sees the two-day suspension Phillips received instead as "a slap in my face."
Officer had a record of inappropriate behavior
The incidents that preceded Phillips's resignation are detailed in a DPD document first obtained by the Denver Post. According to the report, a woman told another Denver police officer that she'd called 911 in February 2023 after seeing a female she believed had been "roofied" at Federales, a bar at 2901 Larimer Street. She and a friend (neither are named in the document) subsequently headed to another nightspot, Improper City, at 3201 Walnut Street, where they spoke with a cop later identified as Phillips. Just over a month later, on March 14, the woman "was awoken by someone shining a flashlight in her bedroom window," the report states. "She related that she called the police to report someone breaking in."
Turns out the presumed home invader was Phillips, who said he was looking into a claim of shots fired in front of the woman's house — an assertion that appears to have been entirely made up. Phillips is said to have "lingered" on the porch for a while after the woman said she hadn't heard any shots, then pretended to knock on a neighbor's door in an attempt to maintain the fiction about gunshots, and finally drove away.
He would return, and often. An analysis of Phillips's movements while on the job showed that he cruised by the woman's house on approximately 78 percent of his shifts.
Phillips also reportedly texted the woman's friend, whose number he'd obtained during the conversation at Improper City. One of his messages read, "Hey hottie, you ever gonna text me back?"
Phillips subsequently insisted that he'd meant to text "Holly," but the phone's autocorrect feature had converted the word to "hottie" — an excuse that might have been more convincing if the friend's name had been Holly. It wasn't.
Significant sections of the report are redacted, but not the conclusion — that because the investigation unearthed no mitigating factors for Phillips's actions, discipline against him was warranted. Not that the officer stuck around to take his punishment: The report, signed by Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas, is dated January 5, 2024, but Phillips resigned on January 2.
This action put a cap on a DPD career marked by a number of problematic moments for Phillips. He was named in a 2005 excessive-force lawsuit filed by David Nettles that was later settled by the City and County of Denver for an undisclosed amount. Twelve years later, in 2017, he was suspended for fifteen days after paying $40 to a prostitute he later dated. And while he didn't earn his two-day benching for the way he treated TC until 2018, its roots stretched back a couple of years, to one of the worst days of her life.
Officer's Actions Added Insult to Injury
On the 4th of July weekend in 2016, TC and a pal grabbed a quick drink at now-defunct club Cold Crush, then headed over to the Meadowlark, at 2701 Larimer Street. There they met Jack and Donald (the names are pseudonyms), who said they were in town for a wedding. TC and her friend lived nearby, and the men offered to walk them home. The pair stuck around after the friend began to feel sick — something that seemed strange, TC recalls, since neither she nor TC had consumed more than a couple of alcoholic beverages. After TC got her friend settled on the couch, she remembers telling the men at least three times that they could go. Neither had taken the hint when TC began feeling incapable of keeping her eyes open — a sensation so extreme that she believes she and her friend were drugged.
TC woke up when Jack started sexually assaulting her; Donald remained in the next room and didn't come to her aid. She fought off Jack and ordered the men to leave, then called 911. The officers who responded didn't seem to do much; they didn't examine the bedroom to see if any physical evidence had been left behind, for example. But TC found some after returning home from the hospital, where she was transported following the incident, and dialed 911 again. This time, Phillips was among the cops called to the scene. He seemed sympathetic, and she says that when she asked him if she should try to track down her assailant, he told her that it wasn't a great idea from a safety perspective, "but if I were you, I would be doing the same thing."
Before long, TC managed to find the location of the wedding, and when she peeked inside the venue, she spotted the men. She again dialed 911, and a couple of officers from the Lakewood Police Department arrived and quizzed the two. Both said they'd done nothing wrong, and they weren't arrested or taken into custody.
Because TC felt that Phillips had been compassionate regarding her situation, she sent him a thank-you email — a gesture that soon backfired in a big way. Phillips began regularly texting TC using his personal cell phone, and while some of his messages initially appeared to be benign, they ultimately went overboard. "We can always run away to the Caribbean together and disappear forever," one reads. Another talked about how pretty she and her friend were, and a third encouraged her to let him know when TC wasn't with her then-current boyfriend anymore.
In May 2017, after Phillips sent a message saying that he wasn't sure if they should communicate anymore because of the risk that she might blow the whistle on him, TC changed her phone number. She didn't immediately contact the DPD's internal affairs office about his behavior, she says, for fear that doing so might get in the way of any action on her case. But in January 2018, after the Denver District Attorney's Office determined that there wasn't enough evidence to charge the men with a crime, she filed a formal complaint against Phillips.
Armando Saldate serves as executive director for the Denver Department of Public Safety.
Denver Department of Public Safety
This characterization was deeply offensive to TC, who emphasizes that she just met with Phillips in person twice, always in the presence of others, and only communicated with him because she wanted her case resolved. She asked that the order's language be changed "since it was on the record that I had a relationship with the officer, and that isn't true."
No action was taken on her request for years. Finally, after Westword contacted the Public Safety office regarding TC's complaints, new Department of Safety Executive Director Armando Saldate issued a revised order in February 2022. It no longer used the word "relationship" and referred to TC as a "victim." But she was still bothered by some of the language, which had not been shared with her in advance, and asked for further changes — requests that she says were ignored.
TC's Quest for Justice Continues
TC confronted Saldate about this issue and others at a Citizen Oversight Board meeting on April 9, and characterizes the manner in which he replied as "appalling" and "rude."Saldate's tone is considerably softer in remarks to Westword about the various cases involving Phillips and the way TC's situation was handled. "I never want anyone, especially those who have experienced sexual assault, to have negative interactions with our public safety staff," he says. "Understanding the sensitivities of interacting with survivors of violence, it is my sincere goal that all of our departments prioritize a trauma-informed approach that treats everyone with compassion, dignity and respect."
Department of Safety spokesperson Kelly Jacobs also offered a statement about Phillips's resignation and TC's argument that he should have been punished more harshly for his earlier behavior: "The actions that led to the resignation of former Officer Phillips were reprehensible. He clearly abused his position as a police officer, which is why the disciplinary process is critical to public safety operations. As there were different decisionmakers in the Department of Safety in 2017, we cannot speak to the reasons behind the prior disciplinary decision. 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."
That's not nearly good enough for TC, who wants to prevent others from suffering the injustices that she's experienced. She spent years communicating with the DPD about sharing what happened to her as part of officer training, she adds, but despite initial encouragement from then-DPD chief Paul Pazen, nothing came of her efforts. She spoke with current chief Ron Thomas at the Citizen Oversight meeting, however, and says he's agreed to meet with her about her police training suggestion.
While TC is pleased that Phillips, who couldn't be reached for comment, is no longer a member of the DPD, her quest isn't over. "It's not about this one officer," she says. "It's about this type of behavior — this type of misconduct not being acceptable."
Click to read the September 2017 Zachery Phillips discipline letter regarding the prostitute-related offense; the April 2018 discipline letter involving his harassment of TC; the February 2022 revision of the 2018 letter; and the January 2024 Zachery Phillips conduct review.
