Overview
- More than 50 officers and civilian staff in England and Wales have been sacked or forced to resign for faking keyboard activity while working from home.
- Greater Manchester Police identified 28 staff in an anti-corruption inquiry, with four dismissed and two resigned as the force suspends home working during ongoing investigations.
- The tactic, known as key-jamming, involved placing objects on keys or holding a single key to simulate activity while staff were away from their desks.
- Named cases include a Durham detective logging over 16,000 presses of the “i” key in 88 minutes, an Avon and Somerset PC holding the “Z” key for 103 hours, and a Kent PC faking more than 60 hours to visit a gym and a golf course.
- The Metropolitan Police declined to provide figures within FOI cost limits, leaving uncertainty about the full national scale.