20 hours ago
Thames Valley Police officers in Cowley sacked after sex video lies
A police officer found to have shown an intimate video of a woman he had been having an affair with has been sacked, along with a colleague a panel said lied about watching John Birch and Daniel Gunston, who were based in Cowley, Oxford, met up outside work and discussed the former's wife finding the sex video and other pictures on his later Gunston told colleagues he had seen an "interesting video" but later denied watching it and said he had briefly seen indistinct thumbnails on Mr Birch's Thames Valley Police officers were found guilty of gross misconduct and sacked following a hearing last month.
Mr Gunston was a member of a team celebrated for its response to a crash that killed a mother and three of her children in a panel found his backtracking on what he had seen on his colleague's phone amounted to "operational dishonesty" and was "intentional and deliberate".Mr Birch, who had been friends with Mr Gunston before they joined the police, had the consensual sexual relationship with the woman in February acknowledged that he kept at least two videos of them on his phone and that he could not have "reasonably believed" the woman had consented to them being shown to other he denied showing at least one of those to his friend because he said he would have been "embarrassed".Mr Birch said he had instead "explained the videos in detail" and that Mr Gunston might have seen intimate images of the woman as he was "waving his mobile phone around".The panel found that "highly implausible".The police officers' identities were initially anonymised "for the purpose of protecting the welfare of [Mr Birch's] children" but revealed after they were dismissed.
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