A POLICE constable from Ebbw Vale and a former sergeant will learn their fate today after being found to have committed gross misconduct by having sex in their busy police station.

Jemma Dicks, 28, and Adam Reed, 40, were said to have brought the reputation of the police service into disrepute after PC Dicks performed a sex act on her superior on at least three occasions at Cardiff Central police station.

On Wednesday, a misconduct panel told PC Dicks, of Ebbw Vale, her breaches of standards of behaviour left her at risk of being sacked from South Wales Police, with Mr Reed already having quit the force.

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PC Dicks will now await a decision on sanctions which will be delivered later today.

A decision is also due on whether Mr Reed will be placed on the policing barred list.

Case presenter Barney Branston submitted to the panel that PC Dicks should be dismissed without notice, saying even a single episode of having sex whilst at a police station would normally justify being sacked, calling her actions "insulting to the public".

Mr Branson added PC Dicks' “behaviour and disdainful attitude is simply incompatible with her continued service”.

Lucy Crowther, representing PC Dicks, said the woman had been “ridiculed and laughed at” for her actions after achieving her “dream” of joining the police force, and called for her to be able to keep her job.

“If there was ever a case where the panel could be assured of no repeated incidents, it is this,” she said.

Three separate allegations against Mr Reed – who left the force in the wake of the allegations in January 2019 – were also found proven, and to have amounted to gross misconduct.

Mr Reed had admitted only one of the encounters with PC Dicks at the police station, while he accepted another allegation of covertly taking photographs of the feet of another female colleague because he had a “foot fetish”.

Chairwoman Emma Boothroyd said Mr Reed, a married father-of-two, had “manipulated” PC Dicks during their 10-month affair, with the younger officer looking up to him as a replacement after her police officer father died.

But she said PC Dicks’ decision to perform the sex acts on Mr Reed on at least three occasions between November 2017 and August 2018 – including once while she was on duty – was a “serious breach of professional behaviour” and amounted to gross misconduct.

PC Dicks, who has been supported by domestic violence charity Welsh Women’s Aid, told the hearing she willingly performed the acts to please Mr Reed and to avoid upsetting him, and after he had made threats to take his own life. She had believed they were in a relationship.