Sex games WPC guilty
Officer who had flings with Sgt in police station could lose job
A POLICEWOMAN who admitted performing sex acts with a foot fetishist sergeant at their station faces the sack after being found guilty of gross misconduct yesterday.
PC Jemma Dicks and former sergeant Adam Reed were said to have brought the reputation of the police into disrepute through their actions.
A misconduct panel yesterday told PC Dicks, 28, that her breaches of standards of professional behaviour left her at risk of losing her job. Mr Reed has already quit.
She will hear her fate today, while a decision is also due on whether Mr Reed, 40, will be barred from working for the police again. Chairman of the panel Emma Boothroyd said Mr Reed, a married father of two, had ‘manipulated’ the younger officer during their ten-month fling, with PC Dicks looking up to him as a replacement for her police officer father, who had died.
But she said PC Dicks’s decision to perform the sex acts on Mr Reed at Cardiff Central station on at least three occasions in 2017 and 2018 – once while on duty – amounted to gross misconduct.
The officer had admitted the acts but claimed they amounted only to misconduct – for which she could not be sacked.
Miss Boothroyd said: ‘The public would expect a police officer on duty to be focused on her duties and not engaging in sexual conduct while at the police station. Using a police station to engage in sexual liaisons, even while off duty, undermines public trust in the police.’ Mr Reed quit South Wales Police ahead of the hearing after admitting a foot fetish and having sex at the police station, but was also found to have committed gross misconduct.
The panel heard that the sexual encounters had been orchestrated by Mr Reed ‘primarily for his own sexual gratification’. PC
‘Smiling and playing to the camera’
Dicks told the hearing she willingly performed the acts to please Mr Reed and to avoid upsetting him, believing they were in a relationship.
One of the encounters was filmed on Mr Reed’s mobile, with PC Dicks being described as ‘smiling and playing to the camera’, although she denied knowing she was being recorded. She said Mr Reed had become abusive and controlling during their affair, saying he accused her of sleeping with other men.
But case presenter Barney Branston claimed during the hearing that PC Dicks’s actions were consensual. He submitted to the panel that she should be dismissed without notice, saying her behaviour was ‘insulting’ to the public and her colleagues.
Three allegations facing Mr Reed, who quit in January 2019, were also found proven.
While he admitted just one of the encounters with PC Dicks, he also admitted covertly taking photographs of another female colleague’s feet because he had a ‘foot fetish’ and having sex with a PCSO while off duty at Cardiff station.
A decision on sanctions is due to be delivered today.