Police officers sacked after sex video lies

Both officers were based at Cowley police station before they were sacked

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 it.

PCs 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 phone.

Days 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 phone.

Both 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 2020.

But 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 2024.

He 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 people.

But 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.