'Foot fetish' caller given suspended sentence

A man who admitted making more than 1,200 nuisance calls to emergency services to indulge a "sexual" foot fetish has been given a suspended sentence.

Richard Cove posed as an elderly woman called Helen Cheeseman to get operators to tell him about their feet, calling the NHS 111 line up to 60 times a day, a court heard.

Cove, 49, of Boundary Road in Worthing, targeted specific Sussex Police call handlers, telling them he wanted to talk about his smelly, sweaty feet.

He pleaded guilty to wasting hours of police time in April and was handed a 10-week suspended sentence at Worthing Magistrates Court.

Investigating officer, Rose Horan, said: "He specifically targeted female officers, some in busy departments dealing with serious sexual offences and online child abuse, wasting scarce public resources to indulge his sexual fetish."

Cove was also banned from calling 999 unless in a genuine emergency and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.

In September 2021, Cove was also given a 16-week prison sentence suspended for two years for calling the NHS 111 service.

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