A police officer uploaded child porn to his personal phone while on duty, a disciplinary hearing has found.
PC Matthew Jukes, a Sussex Police constable, would have been sacked after sourcing prohibited images of children from Twitter had he not resigned.
Jukes, from West Sussex, initially denied the allegations before admitting to uploading the materials to the cloud.
The hearing at Sussex Police HQ in Lewes heard Jukes would later delete the files from his phone once they had been uploaded to the cloud.
He was subsequently interviewed after the National Crime Agency linked his email address to downloads of child porn.
Jukes failed to appear at the hearing earlier today. He will receive only a police caution and a misconduct appeals form.
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The disciplinary hearing was told he downloaded prohibited pornography, necessitating a criminal investigation by Sussex Police.
He has not been charged with any offences after the hearing was told he wiped his phone of the materials and sent it back to the manufacturer.
This is the latest in a string of professional standards scandals for Sussex Police in recent days.
The Argus recently revealed that nearly 100 officers had been investigated for allegations of domestic abuse or sexual offences in the last five years.
A Freedom of Information request submitted in January uncovered that 95 officers were investigated between 2017 and 2022.
Standards bosses said they were trying to create a “call-it-out culture” within the force and that more negative headlines could be expected in the effort to root out offending officers.
An investigation from the Information Commissioner's Office also found that over 200,000 phone calls were unlawfully recorded by staff from Sussex and Surrey Police after an app for hostage negotiators was made available to other officers.
Chief Constable Jo Shiner said she was utterly determined to root out officers who fall below standards expected by the police.
She added: “It is perfectly clear to me former PC Jukes had fallen far from the standards expected by the public.
“This behaviour will not be tolerated in this organisation.”
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