CHOPPER COPS ‘SPIED ON SWINGERS’ COURT TOLD
POLICE HELICOPTER USED FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE, COURT HEARS
A “SEX-OBSESSED” cop used a hi-tech camera on board a police helicopter to record footage of his swinger pals having sex in their garden.
Adrian Pogmore, 51, formerly of South Yorkshire Police, used his position as an air observer to film his swinging friends having an eight-minute sex romp on their patio.
He also used a powerful lens to focus on a nude mum-of-three and her bikini-clad daughters in their garden as his crew mates allegedly watched.
Serving South Yorkshire officers Matthew Lucas, 42, and Lee Walls, 47, retired South Yorkshire Police pilot Malcolm Reeves, 64, and former South Yorkshire pilot Matthew Loosemore, 45, are currently on trial accused of being a part of Pogmore’s set-ups.
Sheffield Crown Court heard Pogmore has already pleaded guilty to the charges after he admitted he pre-planned with his swinging buddies for them to have sex while the helicopter was hovering over so he could film them.
Prosecutor Richard Wright said: “On three separate occasions they filmed a couple having sexual intercourse in their own garden.
“They recorded what they saw using the recording facilities that the helicopter was equipped with.”
The court heard there was ‘ no legitimate reason’ for the officers to film them and ‘no basis’ for flying over people’s homes, selecting them as targets.
The police helicopter, usually used for helping to capture fleeing criminals and also to patrol groups after football games, was even flown over a naturists campsite called Candy Farm.
Pogmore decided to zoom in on a naked couple sat outside their caravan.
Mr Wright said: “Although naturists expect to be seen naked by other naturists they do not expect to be monitored by the crew of the police helicopter, less still that they should be recorded by them.
“Not only is there an invasion of privacy, but there are wider issues at stake, both in terms of the waste of a valuable police resource and also in terms of confidence that the public expects the police helicopter to be used appropriately and for good reason.
“Not to be used for filming citizens in a state of nakedness for the amusement of the crew.”
A jury were shown footage of a woman being spied on by the same helicopter. She was sunbathing fully-naked in her private garden with her three daughters, all wearing bikinis.
The middle-aged mum was sat with her legs arched together with her hands on her head.
He added: “The camera has a powerful zoom function and the operator used that to zoom in on the naked body of the woman and in particular her genitalia.”
Graphic content was also played to the jury when the same crew spotted a couple having sex in their garden in South Yorks.
A brunette, who is fully naked, starts touching a man wearing a Manchester United football shirt as she then performs a sex act on him as a poodle dog sits just a few feet away.
The court heard the presence of the helicopter spurred the couple on and they “brazenly put on a show” by performing sexual intercourse in a variety of positions.
The footage used as evidence in the trial was later found in a drawer belonging to Mr Pogmore in his desk at a police station.
Mr Wright added that the recordings were “not simply the product of one swinging and sexual obsessed air observer Adrian Pogmore but were made with the connivance of the other members of the crew”.
He said Pogmore, who did not appear in court, had pre-planned the meeting with his swinging friends to be hovering over their home at the same moment the couple appeared.
Pogmore pleaded guilty to the charges and does not stand trial alongside his former colleagues.
Walls, of Sheffield, denies one count, Loosemore, of Doncaster, South Yorks, denies one count, Reeves denies one count and Lucas, of Sheffield, denies three counts of misconduct relating to watching and filming naked people without their consent and observing and recording people performing sexual acts.
The trial continues.
‘The camera zoomed in on the naked body of a woman and in particular her genitalia’