INSrod...(Lead)...1 (with pix)

by Sarah Lawrence

A SPECIAL constable who groomed young boys and girls on the internet tried frantically to get away when trapped by police in a 'sting' operation at Tesco in Slough.

David Rodley, 30, groomed the children on a teenage dating website and coerced them into posting intimate pictures.

He told his young victims he was 19 or 24 years old and arranged to meet up with a 14 year-old girl and had sex with her twice in a car and hotel room.

In an undercover police operation officers pretended to be a 13-year-old girl called Olivia talking to Rodley on the dating site who asked if he could meet up with her.

Instead he was ambushed by police in the Tesco car park in Slough where he was found to have a knife in his pocket and injured a detective sergeant as he tried to flee.

Wraps of MDMA, crack cocaine and heroin were discovered at his home. He also had cocaine in his work locker at a Metropolitan Police station.

Judge Ian Pringle, sitting at Oxford Crown Court, sentenced Rodley to nine years behind bars today and told him the speed with which he turned innocent conversation into sexually explicit conversations was "terrifying."

"You demonstrate a cool, cold and calculated attitude which richly deserves punishment," said Judge Pringle.

Nadia Chbat, prosecuting, said the knife found in Rodley's pocket was significant "because of the conversations he had with another of the girls, aged 15 years, where he asked her if she would let him run a knife over her body or have any objections to him cutting her.

"He told her 'would you let me go over your body with a knife' and 'I can taste the blood after I cut you'."

Rodley, of Ashcroft Ave, Sidcup, Kent, admitted 20 charges between October 22, 2018 and February 8, this year.

Judge Pringle also ordered that he be the subject of an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order and put him on an extended licence of five years.