Police officer who spied on swingers having sex from helicopter thought he was 'above the law'

These are the pictures taken by "deviant" police officer Adrian Pogmore as he spied from a force helicopter on a couple having sex in their garden.

The images, released by the Crown Prosecution Service and blurred to protect the identities of the subjects, were taken from the air by Pogmore, who was found guilty of using a police helicopter to film people having sex and sunbathing naked.

Pogmore, 50, used his position as an air observer to film his swinger friends having sex in their gardens. He was described by his fellow officers as the "team deviant", and a "sex-obsessed air observer" after he filmed a couple having sex on their patio.

He also used a South Yorkshire Police helicopter to shoot footage of a woman sunbathing naked in her garden, two naturists sitting outside their caravan and a couple lying naked outside their home.

The pictures were shown to the jury at the Sheffield Crown Court during a three-week trial Pogmore, who was sacked by the police force in 2015, admitted four charges of misconduct in a public office and was jailed for one year.

Two other officers and two pilots were cleared of misconduct after they told the jury they were unaware of what Pogmore was doing with the aircraft's camera. Judge Peter Kelson QC described Pogmore's actions as "offensive and invasive".

"In short, you used a £2m helicopter which costs something like $1,000 an hour to run to advance your own sexual curiosities when it should have been detecting crime," he said. "You spied on and recorded these naked people from a height of 1,000ft.

"Instead of deterring and detecting crime, you were committing crime," he added. "You quite literally, considered yourself above the law. Nobody is above the law."