Officer jailed for filming sex pair from helicopter
A“SEX-OBESSED” former police officer who filmed a couple having sex from his force helicopter has been jailed for a year by a judge who told him: “You, quite literally, considered yourself above the law.”
Pc Adrian Pogmore was in tears as he was sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court for filming the married couple from the South Yorkshire Police aircraft and also recording five other people who were sunbathing naked in the county.
Footage shot by Pogmore, 51, and screened in court included graphic scenes of the man and woman having sex in a range of positions on their suburban patio. Judge Peter Kelson QC heard that 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 £2m helicopter which costs something like 1,000 dollars (sic) an hour to run to advance your own sexual curiosities when it should have been detecting crime.”
He said: “Instead of deterring and detecting crime, you were committing crime.”
The judge said Pogmore’s actions were “offensive and invasive”, and he 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.”
He said: “You spied on and recorded these naked people from a height of 1,000ft. You, quite literally, considered yourself above the law. Nobody is above the law.”
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”.