'Tactics to deceive' | Ex-detective caught faking work by 'key jamming' while WFH

A former Durham Police detective who faked working from home by jamming his keyboard to appear active online would have been dismissed for gross misconduct had he not already resigned, a misconduct hearing has ruled.

The determination found that Former Detective Constable Niall Thubron engaged in “key jamming” - the act of holding down a key on a computer keyboard to make it look as if the computer is in use, and therefore that the user is working - on 38 occasions across 12 days between 3 December 2024 and 13 January 2025, during which he spent “45 hours out of a total of 85 that he was logged in for” pretending to be working.