'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.

“The evidence presented by the AA is overwhelming,” the hearing concluded. “The data from the FO’s [former officer] laptop shows lengthy periods where the only activity is single keystrokes (e.g. 3rd December, where between 10:28 and 11:56, the only input is pressing the h key (about 30 times) and then the ‘i key over 16,000 times).”

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Thubron resigned from the force in May 2025 before proceedings began. He did not attend the hearing or submit a defence.