Man sentenced for impersonating police officer, sexual assault

By Dave Toplikar (contact)

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 | 12:11 p.m.

Phillip Taft

A Las Vegas man who was accused in 2009 of telling women he was a police officer and then taking them to a secluded place and sexually assaulting them was sentenced today to at least 10 years in state prison.

Philip Taft, 41, a former floor supervisor at the Venetian, was sentenced by Clark County District Judge Valorie Vega to 10 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole for sexual assault.

Taft was also sentenced on a misdemeanor charge of impersonating a police officer to 12 months in the Clark County Detention Center. However, he was given credit for the time he has already served since he was arrested on Aug. 3, 2009.

Taft had originally been charged with two counts of first-degree kidnapping, two counts of sexual assault, two counts of open and gross lewdness and two counts of impersonating a police officer in connection with incidents involving two women, according to court records.

Taft, however, entered an agreement with the district attorney’s office and pleaded guilty Sept. 15 to one count of sexual assault and one count of impersonating a police officer.

As part of his sentence, he will also have to register as a sex offender. He was also ordered to pay $3,046.58 in restitution to the Clark County Social Services, a $25 court administration fee and a $150 DNA fee.

Taft was arrested after police released video surveillance images of a man who was later identified as Taft, according to a police arrest report.

The first reported incident happened about 9 p.m. July 26, 2009, police said.

In that case, 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, according to the arrest report.

Although the woman told the man she wasn’t a prostitute, he told her he needed to take her elsewhere for more questioning and to meet with other officers, so the woman got into his vehicle, the arrest report said.

The woman later went into a service station with the man, where video surveillance cameras picked up his image, police said. At that time, the woman said she texted her boyfriend about the incident and told him she was scared, the arrest report said.

The arrest report said the man bought chewing gum and condoms in the store, then took the woman to a secluded place, where the sexual assault took place, officers said. The man then drove her home, the police report said.

The other woman, who was an inmate at the Clark County Detention Center, told a corrections officer she recognized Taft and that he had pretended to be a police officer and forced her to have sexual relations with him at an earlier time.

The second woman told officers the man had told her he had a gun and a badge under the seat and threatened her with jail time unless she had sex with him, the police report said.