A police officer has been dismissed for holding down keys on her laptop with a picture frame when she was pretending to work from home.
The Avon and Somerset police officer, whose anonymity was upheld and referred to as Sergeant X, was dismissed without notice at a gross misconduct hearing on Wednesday in Portishead, near Bristol.
She has been barred from police and other law enforcement agencies.
The panel heard that data used by Avon and Somerset Police’s Professional Standards Department identified PS X’s keystrokes as significantly high in 2024, which prompted an investigation that opened in June that year.
Evidence found during the majority of shifts Sgt X worked in April and May 2025 showed her keystrokes were between three and eight times higher than those of colleagues in a similar role.
Sgt X gave an account of her actions and admitted using a corner of a picture frame to weigh down the keys so her laptop would not go into “sleep mode”, and she could therefore monitor calls on a separate screen during a time in which she had challenges in her personal life.
According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Sgt X said she was in fear of her position and accused a supervisor of wanting to remove her from the department. But barrister Mark Ley-Morgan said there was no evidence of this.
Former Assistant Chief Constable Craig Holden, chair of the misconduct panel, found her behaviour amounted to gross misconduct.
Det Supt Larisa Hunt, the head of Avon and Somerset Police’s Professional Standards Department, said: “It is extremely disappointing that an officer has behaved in a way which could not only discredit the police force, but also undermine the public confidence in respect of our duties and responsibilities.
“We know officers and staff deal with immense pressure and high workloads, and while Sgt X had some mitigating circumstances, it’s unacceptable for an officer to act in this deliberate and deceitful way by abusing the trust placed in her, by making it appear she was working when she was not.
“We recognise the overwhelming majority of our officers and staff work hard to protect the public.”
