Clearwater police left a man ‘asleep’. Hours later, he was dead.

CLEARWATER – It was as if the officers at the Clearwater Police Department preferred to be doing something other than what they were asked to do on February 27, 2020: check on Adam Phillips, a 49-year-old grandfather known for texting correctly away .

This is what your girlfriend later said to lawyers. She and her daughter, Alexis Phillips, asked the police to see how he was doing. He strangely missed answering calls or text messages for almost a day.

Cpl. David Nugent and another police officer entered Adam Phillips’ apartment and shouted a few times, according to an internal investigation. They found him in bed, with no answer. But they never entered the room, the report said.

Corporal said he threw a magazine at Phillips. It landed on his arm, police pictures showed later. He didn’t move.

“He’s here and breathing,” Nugent said to his girlfriend, according to an internal report. He left after offering some unsolicited advice: “You may want to find another boyfriend”.

The next day, a different group of Clearwater officers found Adam Phillips in the same place, the magazine still touching him. He was dead.

Now, a lawsuit filed by her daughter against the police department says the officers who responded on February 27 were negligent and could have saved Adam Phillips’ life if they had done their job correctly.

The officers assumed Phillips was “sleeping or pretending to be asleep,” according to an internal police investigation.

The Clearwater Police Department investigation resulted in Nugent’s reprimand. The 25-year-old police veteran “failed to conduct the appropriate investigations commonly made for such a call,” said the internal report, and “failed to properly communicate with his deputy or develop an appropriate plan before entering the residence.”

In short, he concluded that Nugent had neglected his duty.

“Many people who live alone don’t have such caring family members,” said Alexis Phillips’ lawyer Wesley Straw.

The grandfather “made two people who loved him so much, actually call the police department so he could take them there in time to save his life, and they did their job randomly and carelessly,” said Straw. “Shouldn’t they serve and protect?

“In that case, they didn’t either.”

Accidental overdose

An autopsy found that Adam Phillips died sometime between February 27 and February 28, 2020, of an accidental drug overdose, including hydrocodone and oxycodone, both opioids found in prescription painkillers. Straw said they were among the drugs Phillips was prescribed for chronic pain problems, including back and knee problems and unsuccessful hernia surgery.

In 2016, Clearwater officials became the first police force in the Tampa Bay region to begin transporting naloxone, a drug that quickly reverses opioid overdoses. All police officers carry him, said police spokesman Rob Shaw.

Neither the internal report nor the file addresses whether police officers should have used naloxone or whether it would have helped Phillips.

There is also no agency policy that specifically describes how law enforcement officers should carry out what the police call welfare checks, which is when officers are sent to check someone’s welfare.

The internal investigation did not blame the other officer. Shaw declined to comment on the lawsuit – neither the agency nor the city commented on pending litigation – and refused to make Nugent available for an interview.

Phillips may have taken the wrong dosage, suggested Straw, or accidentally mixed drugs that reacted badly together. He was not a recreational drug user, the lawyer said, but added that the way the overdose happened did not justify the fact that the police did not help the 49-year-old.

“He was one of the two most important beings in (Alexis) ‘s life”, along with his daughter, he said. “All of your memories and your future included you.”

Straw described Adam Phillips as a sociable and sociable man with a large circle of friends and a great love for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He worked as an insurance appraiser. He and Alexis’s mother divorced in 2018, but he moved on with his life, the lawyer said, and was happy: because of his new girlfriend, but mostly because he recently became a grandfather.

He was an active father to Alexis, said Straw, coaching his football teams when she was a child and exploding with pride for her academic and athletic achievements as a football player at Largo High School and Limestone University in South Carolina. When she became pregnant , it looked like he would do it all again.

“Emotionally, he was probably never in a better place,” said Straw, “because he had a new granddaughter who was the love of his life and gave him a fuller future.”

Alexis Phillips was not available to speak with Tampa Bay Times this week, but gave Straw permission to discuss the process.

Shortly after his father died, the coronavirus pandemic affected everything. Straw said it took nearly nine months for her daughter to celebrate the life she planned for her father.

‘We would not have coverage’

Nugent and the other officer had no plans when they entered Adam Phillips’s apartment, according to the internal investigation, or even much of an argument. Both told investigators that they didn’t ask about Phillips’ medical history, nor did they try to call his phone or ask if the neighbors had seen him.

The only thing they asked, the report said, was whether he had any weapons. The girlfriend said she thought so. Nugent told investigators that this detail influenced his behavior. None of the policemen ever crossed the threshold of the bedroom.

“I feared that if we exceeded that limit, we would have no cover or concealment,” said Nugent to an investigator. “And if we get into some kind of situation where force is used, I would be sitting here having to answer why I went there.”

Therefore, none of the officers entered the room, the internal investigation said. Nor did they approach Phillips, examine him physically or try to wake him up.

Nugent told an investigator that he may have exaggerated his comments to Phillips’ girlfriend. But other than that, none of the policemen thought he had done anything wrong. A gun was later found on the nightstand.

The girlfriend and maintenance workers waited outside the apartment when the police entered February 27. But the police said she couldn’t come in to check on Phillips alone, according to Straw. In interviews with investigators, police said she never asked.

The next morning, Phillips’s loved ones had not yet heard of him. Then, they asked the police to do another welfare check.

A different group of officers responded. One called Phillips. When he didn’t respond, the policeman went over to Phillips’ bed and realized that he had died.

Then a detective looked at Phillips’ phone and tablet and found what may have been his last words, an Instagram message sent to his girlfriend on the night of February 26: “Sweet dreams.”