Police officer who slept on duty committed gross misconduct

A police officer who slept while pretending to work from home committed gross misconduct, an internal investigation has found.

The officer, who has since resigned from his role at Leicestershire Police, held down a laptop key to dupe colleagues into believing he was working when he was actually asleep on the job.

At an online misconduct hearing held on Monday (29 July), Chief Constable Rob Nixon described the officer’s behaviour as “deliberate, dishonest, repeated and persistent”, according to BBC reports.

The former officer, who the force has not identified on welfare grounds, used “work avoidance tactics” and regularly placed his watch on the keyboard to keep it live and fool colleagues. He did this on 30 separate occasions between December 2023 and January 2024 and half of his working days were lost due to these avoidance tactics, the hearing was told.

During the investigation, it was revealed that the officer would keep the volume high on his laptop to alert him to any calls. Usage of one of his laptop keys was 83 times above average in the force as a whole and his actions also caused concerns over the security risks related to leaving a police laptop on for a long period without it being used.

After joining Leicester Police in October 2023, the officer was still on probation when allegations against him were first raised. He failed to meet the force’s requirements during that period and was transferred to a firearms licensing position in which he began working from home.

The hearing ruled the officer had committed gross misconduct and would have been dismissed without notice if he had still been an employee. He will now also be on the police barred list, according to Nixon.

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