Man accused of kidnapping, sex assault might face more charges

By Cara McCoy

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2009 | 2:21 p.m.

A man arrested Monday after being accused of impersonating a police officer and kidnapping a woman, then sexually assaulting her, likely will face additional charges after a second woman told police she also was assaulted, the Clark County District Attorney’s Office said today.

Phillip Taft, 38, has been booked into the Clark County Detention Center on charges of sexual assault, first-degree kidnapping, lewdness and impersonating a police officer after two women contacted police, alleging Taft told them he was a police officer and sexually assaulted them.

Police released video surveillance images on July 28 of a man wanted for questioning in the case. Anonymous calls to Crime Stoppers identified the man as Taft, who works at the Venetian as a floor supervisor, an arrest report indicates.

The first reported incident happened at about 9 p.m. on July 26, police said. A woman told police a man driving a gold, four-door vehicle approached her in the parking lot of her apartment complex in the 4200 block of Tropicana Avenue. The man told the woman he was an undercover police officer and showed her a gold badge, arrest records show.

The man asked a series of prostitution-related questions and the woman told him she wasn’t a prostitute, she told police. However, the man said he needed to take her elsewhere for more questioning and to meet with other officers, so the woman got into the vehicle.

The man drove to a gas station and asked the woman to enter the store with him, she told police. Video surveillance tapes obtained by police show the woman and man matching the description of her alleged attacker entering the store. The man told the woman to wait for him in the vehicle, so she returned and sent a text message to her boyfriend saying that a man pulled her over and showed her a badge, but she was scared, the arrest report says.

A receipt from the gas station indicates the man paid in cash for chewing gum and a package of condoms, police said.

The man took the woman to a secluded location, where the alleged sexual assault took place, authorities said, then drove her back to her home.

The victim told police the attacker told her he had committed the same acts with four other women.

Police interviewed Taft at the Investigative Services Division, 4750 W. Oakey Blvd., with his lawyer present. He told police the incident was “prostitution-related” and denied the allegations of sexual assault and kidnapping, according to the report.

A second woman, an inmate at the Clark County Detention Center, on Monday told a corrections officer she recognized Taft. She told the officer the man had pretended to be a police officer and had forced her to have sexual relations with him at an unidentified time.

The woman, a prostitute, said a man she identified as Taft picked her up at a business on Tropicana Road. As they were speaking in the man’s car, the man told her he was a police officer and had a gun and a badge under the seat. The woman told police she got scared because, while she had been arrested by vice detectives before, they had never driven her the distance the man had gone. She sent a text message to a friend, indicating she had been picked up by a police officer, the report says.

The man then took her to an area near Sunset and Fort Apache roads and threatened her with jail time if she didn’t have sex with him, so she complied, the report says.

The man dropped the woman off at The Orleans after the alleged assault. He told her on the ride back that he wasn’t a police officer, but instead was a lawyer, the woman told police.

During an interview with detectives, the woman told police she didn’t report the crime because she was doing something illegal and didn’t know the man’s name. She also told police she had seen the man several times in the Tropicana corridor since the incident took place.

Taft is scheduled to appear in court at 7:30 a.m. Aug. 5.