Helicopter sex film of swingers released as policeman is jailed
PHOTOGRAPHS taken from a police helicopter of a swinging couple having sex in their garden, including the naked wife appearing to wave to the camera, have been released after the “sex obsessed” former police officer who filmed them was jailed for a year.
Sentencing Pc Adrian Pogmore, 51, for filming the married couple and recording five other people who were sunbathing naked, the judge told him: “You, quite literally, considered yourself above the law.”
Judge Peter Kelson QC at Sheffield Crown Court heard how the officer, who served for 22 years until he was sacked, knew the couple through a shared interest in the swinging scene.
The court heard that Pogmore was “a swinging and sex-obsessed air observer” who was referred to as the “team deviant” by other members of the air support unit at South Yorkshire Police.
Judge Kelson said: “In short, you used a £2 million helicopter which costs something like $1,000 (£770) an hour to run to advance your own sexual curiosities when it should have been detecting crime.” He added: “Instead of deterring and detecting crime, you were committing crime.”
The judge, who ordered that pictures of the couple be released, said Pogmore’s actions were “offensive and invasive” and called him a “rogue police officer”.
Judge Kelson said: “So strong were your sexual urges that you were willing to take, and did take, substantial risks of being detected by your colleagues in the helicopter at the time.”
But the judge said he also took into account Pogmore’s police service, which included a number of commendations, including for saving the life of an 11-year-old boy. And he said he understood the huge impact this case had on the officer’s family after “something in the region of 15 to 20 minutes of misconduct in a 22-year police career”. The judge said he found it an “immensely difficult” sentencing exercise and said: “I’m as acutely aware as anyone else that without the thin blue line this country would fall into anarchy.”
But he said Pogmore’s actions had “severely damaged public confidence” in the police and were a “gross abuse of trust”.
Pogmore, of Rotherham, admitted four counts of misconduct in a public office last month relating to four incidents between 2007 and 2012.
Two other police officers and two helicopter pilots were tried and cleared of the same offence after telling a jury that they had no idea what Pogmore was doing with the high-powered camera on board the aircraft.