Over the course of the three-week trial, Sheffield Crown Court heard that 51-year-old Adrian Pogmore was “a swinging and sex-obsessed air observer”.

He used the South Yorkshire Police helicopter four times from 2007-12.

He filmed a naked couple sitting by a caravan, a woman sunbathing with her daughters, and a couple he knew having sex on their patio.

The judge castigated him for using a £2 million helicopter “to advance your own sexual curiosities when it should have been detecting crime”.

Sentencing him to jail, Judge Peter Kelson QC told him: “You spied on and recorded these naked people from a height of 1,000ft. You quite literally considered yourself above the law.”