Police officer cleared of trying to film colleague showering

Jonathan Eaton is cleared of an allegation that he tried to film a female colleague in the shower

A police officer has been cleared of trying to film a naked colleague while she was showering at work.

PC Jonathan Eaton, 32, had pleaded not guilty at Newport Crown Court to attempting to record the woman at Gloucestershire Constabulary's HQ.

Jurors took five hours and 12 minutes to return a not guilty verdict.

PC Eaton told the court his phone was facing the wrong way for him to have filmed the woman and he had been using the cubicle to dampen his hair.

The verdict came after a six-day trial, following the alleged crime on 27 February 2019 at Gloucestershire police's base in Quedgeley.

Judge Geraint Walters said to the jury: "There was effectively only one question to be answered and that was, 'what was the phone doing there in the shower cubicle and did PC Eaton attempt to either record or observe whoever was showering in the adjacent cubicle, whether the phone was pointed upwards or not'?

"You've answered this with your not guilty verdict."

'Camera not operational'

Earlier in the trial, prosecutor Matthew Roberts told the court the woman had seen "a distinctive phone being held underneath the partition" of the shower cubicles.

"Almost immediately a man tried to leave the shower complex," he added.

PC Eaton, of Brockworth, Gloucester, said he had placed his phone on the floor as he knelt down to use the shower head, in order to tidy up his hair.

"As far as I was concerned the camera mode was not operational. The phone's camera lens would have been facing the floor if it was in camera mode and facing the ceiling if it was in selfie mode," he said.

The court was told that PC Eaton reset his phone to factory settings soon after leaving the police HQ. He said he had done this because his phone had been "very sluggish".