PC who made sexual comments to officer posing as 12-year-old girl has sentencing delayed

Sentencing has been delayed for a police officer who made sexual comments to an undercover officer posing as a 12-year-old schoolgirl.

Adam McManus, 40, was a front-line constable at Cumbernauld Police Station when he was caught by an undercover officer posing on the messaging service Kick as a young girl.

McManus was told by a sheriff that the sentencing delay would allow for the “fullest assessment” to be carried out of his risk of re-offending.

Falkirk Sheriff Court was told that McManus, 40, had worked as a school campus police officer covering two high schools in Airdrie “for a number of years”.

He was caught after an investigation under “Operation Overview”, a covert police operation combating online child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Prosecutor Jennifer Barnier said: “The Operation Overview objectives are to identify and swiftly bring to justice offenders who pose a risk to children once all conventional police tactics have been exhausted.”

The court heard McManus contacted a police officer working as a decoy, who was posing on Kick Messenger as a teenage girl named “Chloe”.

Ms Barnier said: “During their initial communication on January 9, 2025, she said that she was a 12-year-old girl in her first year of high school in Airdrie.

He asked about her school uniform and asked her to send photographs of her wearing it. She confirmed, during a second online communication, that she was in school at the time, and he asked her if she liked short skirts and asked her to send him photographs.

In later online communications from his then home in Larbert, he made references to her underwear and asked her about her sexual experiences.

Ms Barnier said: “She reminded him she was 12 and he continued to ask about her sexual activity.”

Police raided his then home and found evidence of the conversations on his phone, as well as conversations with another paedophile called “Ollie Oogler” about how they would abuse children.

They also found 25 child abuse videos – some of the most serious kind – and some still images of children posing sexually.

Married McManus, a father-of-one, pleaded guilty last month to sexual communication with an undercover officer pretending to be a child, between January 9 and February 4, 2025.

He also admitted downloading child abuse images and indecent electronic communication with another paedophile.

He had been remanded in custody until Friday for the preparation of background reports, but solicitor Pamela Rodgers, defending, said he had been moved prisons to Dumfries and because of this, a planned second social work interview with him had not taken place.

The court heard there was therefore still “a bit of a lack of information” about the reasons for McManus’s offence, but there was “an assertion that loneliness might be a factor”.

Ms Rodgers said McManus had “taken steps to address” the cause of his offending. The court heard in January that he was “currently suspended from duty”.

Sheriff Christopher Shead said that “with some hesitation” he would accede to Ms Rodgers’s request for time to allow social workers to complete their risk assessment, and continued the case until later this month.

McManus, who appeared by video link, hung his head throughout the remote hearing.