Former West Yorkshire Pc jailed for child sex offences
A former West Yorkshire Police officer has been jailed for three years and nine months for a string of sex offences against children.
Christopher Snow, 25, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court on Thursday after admitting eight offences of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.
Snow, of Moor Road, Headingley, Leeds also admitted 10 charges of making indecent images of children.
The offences were all committed against girls aged 12, 13 and 14.
Hundreds of images
The court heard that Snow made contact with his victims by posing as a 15-year-old boy on internet chatrooms.
Judge Christopher Batty said he had been "devious in his grooming of teenage girls".
Snow was also found in possession of 642 indecent images, the court heard.
His sentence included two months for breaching a previous sexual offences prevention order.
Snow joined West Yorkshire Police in 2004 but resigned in 2006 after pleading guilty to previous offences of making and possessing indecent images of children.
Those offences covered the period from October 2004 to December 2005 for which Snow received a six-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, and was ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
'Abuse of trust'
The offences for which he has now been jailed were detected during a police investigation in September 2009 covering 4,500 computer users.
After the hearing, Det Con Lisa Wright, one of the investigating officers, said: "We welcome today's sentence which we feel accurately reflects the severity of the crime.
"Christopher Snow will no longer be in a position to abuse the trust that was placed in him by these vulnerable young girls who believed he was a teenage boy.
"I hope the sentence will bring some closure to his victims and their families.
"I would also remind parents to be aware of how their children use the internet and, where possible, try to ensure that children are in a supervised part of the house when accessing the internet."