Spy in the sky: police helicopter filmed swingers’ patio sex session
POLICE officers used a force helicopter to film five naked sunbathers and “brazen” swingers having sex in their garden, a court has heard.
Pilots and officers with the South Yorkshire force also used hi-tech surveillance equipment to record unwitting naturists at a nudist colony.
Adrian Pogmore, 50, Matthew Lucas, 42, and Lee Walls, 47, were serving officers with South Yorkshire Police. Matthew Loosemore, 45, and Malcolm Reeves, 64, flew the aircraft, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
Pogmore, a swinger described as “sex-obsessed”, kept video recordings of the victims in his desk. He has admitted misconduct in public office and has been dismissed from the force, but his former colleagues deny the charges.
Yesterday, at the opening of the trial, jurors watched the videos, including an eight-minute clip of the swingers on the patio of their home in July 2008.
A naked, slim, brunette waved at the helicopter before performing a sex act on her husband, who was dressed in a Manchester United football shirt. The couple then had sex in their garden in a variety of positions.
Prosecutor Richard Wright QC said: “The couple who were filmed on this occasion were very much aware that they were being observed, indeed they seem to relish it.”
He added: “The reason that this couple are so happy to be recorded engaging in sexual intercourse is that they are friends of Mr Pogmore and shared his sexual interest in the swinging scene. It was clearly, therefore, no coincidence that the helicopter orbits around their garden while they brazenly put on a show.”
But the court heard that earlier that day the helicopter crew had also hovered beside a nudist camp, with the camera sweeping the resort for naked sunbathers. They eventually zoomed in on a naked couple sitting in deckchairs outside their caravan.
Another three-minute long video featured a mother-of-three sunbathing naked on the lawn of her luxury private property surrounded by 100ft trees and 7ft iron gates. The final offence occurred on July 22, 2012, and involved the filming of a middle-aged couple as they sunbathed naked on the patio of their cottage in the countryside.
Mr Wright added: “There was no basis for flying over their homes, selecting them as targets and filming them. This was a deliberate invasion of their privacy for at the very least the inappropriate amusement of the crew and at worst for their sexual gratification.
“It represents not just an abuse of the trust that was placed in them as the crew of the police helicopter, but also a gross waste of a valuable resource and all with the effect that as a result the public confidence in the South Yorkshire Constabulary is diminished.”
The hearing continues.