The horror of having a gun pointed at you

WHAT they saw that morning will forever be etched in their memory.

It was supposed to be a simple drug bust, but when Zachary Phillips and the drug unit entered that particular room of the house, the last thing they were expecting to see was a girl bound by shoelaces around her wrists and legs.

“She was on a potty chair and she had been in this room for years probably, extremely malnourished. She’s been tied to that chair so long that the skin had actually grown around the shoelaces,” Phillips recalled.

“That had a tremendous effect on me and everybody in my unit,” he said, labelling it as his most life-impacting moment as a police officer, “I remember looking at her thinking she was maybe three or four years old and she was really like eight or nine.”

This is one of the horrendous realities police officers sometimes face as they carry out their duties daily to serve and protect the community. Though he doesn’t know the little girl’s current status, he revealed that her brain never developed as it should have because of her severe malnourishment when found.

Now the deputy chief assistant US Attorney for the District of Colorado assigned to the Organised Crime Drug Task Force, Phillips believes there is an absolute need for psychological relief for officers.