This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

Please enable Javascript to watch this video

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- After investigating, the Kansas City Police Department confirmed a man once suspected of being a fake cop is actually one of its officers who was on duty when he questioned two Northland teenagers.

FOX 4 News was first to report the encounter, which happened Monday morning in Anita B. Gorman Park near NE Vivion Road and North Oak Trafficway.

Two 16-year-old girls filed a police report after what they and their parents considered a “suspicious search” by a man claiming to be a police officer.

The girls said they were off school for President’s Day and were parked in the park killing time before a movie, when a man dressed in a tactical vest with a silver badge patch and carrying a gun on his belt approached their car and accused them of smoking pot.

“Then he pulled out this scope,” one girl told FOX 4, “and he said I’ve been watching you, and it looked like you were smoking a pipe or something. We said ‘No,’ and he checked the entire car.”

The girls said they never saw his police car, and noticed the man wasn’t wearing a name tag. However, it’s what he did next that really made them question his status as a police officer.

They said he began searching their purses and stuck his hand in one of their front pockets to “look for drugs.”

Even after he didn’t find any evidence of marijuana, one girl said he snapped a picture of her ID on his cell phone. He then told them they were free to go and walked off, with no police car in sight.

“I thought he was a cop,” one girl said, “and I’ve always been able to trust police, but then he`s coming up, doing all these things, like accusing us… I felt very uncomfortable the entire time. It was just very off. We just knew the whole situation was not right.”

Finding out the man is a legitimate police officer did not do much to calm the concerns of one of the girl’s mothers, who is now considering filing a complaint with the police department.

Brian McCallister, a Kansas City attorney who is not involved with this case but specializes in police misconduct, agreed that contacting the Office of Citizens Complaints might be the best move.

He said if the girls felt uneasy, they were right to file a police report questioning this man’s identity and intentions.

“If as these girls have alleged that they weren’t doing anything,” he said, “and they thought these are really strange circumstances, they should be on high alert.”

McCallister said the officer reaching into their pockets without reasonable suspicion is a constitutional violation to a person’s privacy.

“It’s not legal for a police officer to do that,” he said.

McCallister also questioned the officer’s decision to use his cell phone to take a picture of one of the girls’ IDs, especially after he found no wrongdoing.

“It’s not typical at all,” he said, “and it’s certainly not something that Chief Forte would say that he teaches his police officers in Kansas City to take a picture of an ID. That’s not something that’s in the policies and procedures.”

A media unit representative with the police department told FOX 4 the officer in question is still on duty as they “continue to look into the matter.” They declined to answer any follow-up questions as they “are still gathering details.”