Policing the police Two sacked as force tracks home-working officers

AVON and Somerset Police turned detective on its own officers amid concern some workers were abusing working from home.

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Two officers have been sacked for gross misconduct in the past two months for faking working from home after being caught by 'keystroke tracking'.

On Monday a disciplinary hearing heard the now former PC Liam Reakes weighed down the 'z' key on his laptop keyboard for over 100 hours in total from June to September last year.

A subsequent investigation found that he had been doing this since September 2023. The panel's ruling, that the officer would have been dismissed had he not already resigned, followed a similar case in April when Det Con Philippa Baskwill was also found to have committed gross misconduct and was fired without notice.

The force's professional standards department discovered she weighed down keyboard characters on her work laptop at home with her mobile phone for more than 46 hours over 15 shifts.

Monitoring software showed her number of keystrokes rocketed from two million in 2022 to 21 million the following year.