PA Images/ITVA former glamour model is suing police for £200,000 after an officer used a helicopter to film her and her young daughters sunbathing in the garden.
52-year-old Adrian Pogmore was jailed for a year in 2017 after admitting to four counts of misconduct in public office as he used the South Yorkshire Police helicopter to spy on Tracy Dixon.
The ex-Page Three girl has now issued a writ – a formal written order – claiming the police invaded her privacy and caused her distress by refusing to reveal the full details about how often she had been spied on, The Sun reports.
Dixon was shown one video Pogmore had taken in 2007 after police were made aware of the footage in 2015. The video showed her laying naked on a sun lounger alongside two of her teenage daughters, who were wearing bikinis. However, the mum-of-three believes there are more tapes of her.
The officer, who has been described as ‘sex obsessed’, served in South Yorkshire police’s air support unit and was reportedly a member of a swingers club. Dixon said she noticed the helicopter three to four times a week over a period of a couple of years.
PA ImagesPogmore used a powerful camera lens which is said to have been capable of reading a number plate from two miles away to capture the 54-year-old and her daughters, aged 18, 15 and eight at the time, who were also sunbathing.
Dixon was told the identity of the officer and was horrified to realise they had gone to school together in Rotherham, The Sunday Times report.
Speaking of their link, the former glamour model said:
We were two years apart but he would have known me.
Now I’m terrified he’s been secretly watching me, stalking me, following me for decades.
ITVPogmore was fired by South Yorkshire Police and sentenced in 2017 at Sheffield Crown Court, where Judge Peter Kelson QC said:
In short, you used a £2 million helicopter which costs something like £1,000 an hour to run to advance your own sexual curiosities when it should have been detecting crime.
Instead of deterring and detecting crime, you were committing crime.
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.
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.
ITVAccording to The Sunday Times, Pogmore also used the helicopter to film a couple having sex on their patio and another couple naked by their caravan.
Two police pilots and two police observers were cleared of helping Pogmore make the films, though one officer, PC Lee Walls, still faces disciplinary proceedings.
Dixon says South Yorkshire Police failed to offer her a full personal apology.
The police say they will offer her a full written apology but argued the mum has given interviews and wants her to list all contact she has had with the media and details of payments and commercial benefits.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.