Friday 6 March 2015 16:26, UK
A former policewoman has been jailed for 22 months after seizing CCTV footage of a street bust-up to be used as a "tool to blackmail" Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard.
Helen Jones, 32, a former PC with Merseyside Police, obtained the footage by "flashing her warrant card" to the manageress of a bank.
The incident involved friends of Gerrard, the then-England captain, becoming involved in a row with other men at a bar near his home in Formby, Merseyside, which spilled out on to the street and was caught on the CCTV cameras of a nearby bank.
Local businessman Paul Lloyd, 35, claimed Gerrard "threw the first punch" but, at an earlier hearing, prosecutors said the Liverpool midfielder was acting as a peacemaker on the evening of August 4 2013.
Jones, formerly of Formby, now living in Chatham, Kent, did not deny improperly using her status as a police officer to get the CCTV and admitted misconduct in a public office but claimed she was doing a favour for a friend.
But during a three day hearing, known as a trial of issue last November, Judge Stuart Baker said he found her account "wholly implausible", ruling Jones acted for "base motives" and described her as a "practised and persistent liar".
He said the CCTV was secured to use it "possibly as a lever to cause Mr Gerrard to pay money to suppress it or, at the very least, to use it in a away which would potentially cause embarrassment, as has in fact occurred".
Jailing her today Judge Baker told the defendant: "This was deliberate and calculated misconduct in a public office."
The judge added: "You deliberately created a false impression in the mind of the bank manager that you were investigating a criminal offence.
"In fact you were on a mission to obtain that matter so that you could put it either directly or through an intermediary, who would use it for his own ends, which were nothing whatsover to do with a criminal investigation."
