Cop "worked" from home: 10 million Z-key presses cost him his career
A police officer’s ultimate work-from-home hack has spectacularly backfired, costing him his job.
PC Liam Reakes clocked more than 100 fake hours by weighing down the Z key on his keyboard so that his computer didn’t go into sleep mode.
The Avon and Somerset officer, based in Yeovil, quit his job but would have been sacked, a tribunal has found.
He opened a blank Word document and held down the button during multiple shifts between June and September 2023.
This sometimes went on for more than four hours, but he denied trying to trick others into thinking he was working from home when he wasn’t.
A typical keyboard’s repeat rate when held down is around 30 characters per second.
There are 360,000 seconds in 100 hours, meaning that he would have poured out roughly 10.8 million Zs throughout his deception.
He accepted his work fell below the standard expected, but denied gross misconduct.
There had been concerns raised about PC Reakes’ performance throughout 2024 before the ploy was discovered.
An internal audit of keystrokes in September 2024 then found that his total was much higher than others doing similar jobs.
He argued that he was suffering from a lack of support and motivation and claimed he held down the Z button to help his mental health.
He said it allowed him to see his computer screen and respond quickly to notifications.
However, the police service’s barrister Mark Ley-Morgan said there was no evidence to support this claim.
He said ‘We are all entitled to take a break and have a cup of tea but this was far beyond that.
‘There is no place in the police service for dishonest officers.’
The panel’s chair, Craig Holden, called the officer’s behaviour ‘deceitful and dishonest’.
He said: ‘He had lied during [the disciplinary] interview process when he could have come clean, and the activity was regular and sustained.’
Avon and Somerset Police’s Det Supt Larisa Hunt said: ‘PC Reakes was the subject of an action plan and was allocated a tutor due to concerns over his performance prior to the keyboard audit being carried out.
‘The use of any device or system to replicate keyboard activity is wholly wrong and deceptive and the public will be rightly outraged at this behaviour.’
Reakes was banned from returning to the police service again.
Head of Investigations
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