Westword: McKinzie Rees was sexually assaulted by her sergeant when she was an officer with the Edgewater Police Department in 2019. After reporting it, Rees says she was forced to resign.

More than four years later, the perpetrator, Nathan Geerdes, pleaded guilty to Rees’s assault. He was sentenced in April to four years probation, made to register as a sex offender and barred from working in law enforcement. Last month, Rees was granted a $575,000 settlement from the city of Edgewater after suing for discrimination.

But like her attacker, Rees still cannot work in law enforcement in Colorado.

As a result of the assault and subsequent investigation, Rees was added to the state’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) database — essentially a database for bad cops. Rees has two entries on the database, marking her for resigning “while under investigation” and for “dishonesty” in her initially disbelieved assault report, which makes her ineligible for peace officer certification.

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