A Payson police officer is on administrative leave while being investigated for a reported inappropriate sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl who attended the school at which he was a resource officer.

The Payson Police Department reassigned the officer to patrol division in February, when the department’s internal investigation first started.

The officer was placed on administrative leave on April 16, after the girl’s mother came forward with information that led police to believe an inappropriate sexual relationship between the officer and the girl had occurred.

The case was handed off to Pleasant Grove Police Department on April 17. The officer has not been arrested or charged.

A search warrant approved in Fourth District Court approved the investigative officer from Pleasant Grove Police Department to obtain communications from the Payson officer’s cellphone.

The mother told police in April her daughter referred to the 46-year-old officer as her boyfriend, and said she had sex with him. The daughter reportedly told her mother that, when she turned 18, they could be together.

When interviewed by Payson police, the girl did not disclose anything inappropriate between her and the officer, the warrant states.

The officer reportedly told the Payson Police Chief Brad Bishop in February that the girl gravitates toward him and sees him as someone to lean on for support, but denied that the relationship was ever sexual.

According to the warrant, the officer had been warned by the school’s principal not to allow the girl into his office because she was in the office too frequently.

During the course of Payson police’s internal investigation, a police officer from the Santaquin Police Department was interviewed. That officer said he saw the Payson officer and the girl sitting in a Payson police patrol car between 6 and 7:30 p.m. in January. The patrol vehicle lights were turned off.

The Santaquin officer told the investigator that both the Payson officer and the girl appeared very nervous when he approached the vehicle. The Santaquin officer said the situation made him uncomfortable, and he stayed until the girl left.

The Payson officer reportedly told the Santaquin officer that the girl was his confidential informant.

A previous version of this article misidentified the Payson Chief of Police.