The fastest gun in the South

An armed police officer who had sex with a married woman while on duty kept his job after arguing that he could still reach his gun because it was attached to his trousers around his ankles.

Pc Shaun Jenkins, 36, met the woman while he was on patrol and took her to his house, where they had intercourse as his colleague waited outside for 40 minutes in their car.The officer was originally allowed to keep his job, but was sacked for misconduct after the husband of the woman complained.

Gwent Police said his misconduct was made worse by him leaving his loaded pistol on a table during the encounter.

However, Pc Jenkins appealed successfully, saying the disciplinary procedure had been mishandled. An appeals panel also upheld his claim that he was always in reach of the pistol because it was in his holster, attached to his trousers.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission yesterday upheld his reinstatement, although it expressed surprise at the panel’s decision.

Pc Jenkins, who has been decorated for bravery three times, was taken off firearms duty but remains a neighbourhood policeman in South Wales. An IPCC spokesman said no further action could be taken against him because the disciplinary action had been mishandled.

Tom Davies, the head of the IPCC in Wales, said he was bemused by some of the appeal panel’s findings. “The finding that the gun was never out of Pc Jenkins’ direct and immediate control because it was in a holster, attached to his trousers, which were attached to him, albeit around his ankles, is surprising."

Anyone who read this story this morning without laughing must have a heart of stone. Another noble entry in the annals of the nonpareil Police in Wales, for all human life is here.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glowworms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.