At least 50 police officers and civilian staff in the UK have been dismissed or forced to resign in the past three years for faking keyboard activity while working remotely, according to a freedom of information request and public records checks by The Times.
Among those caught was former PC Liam Reakes of Avon and Somerset Police, who resigned after being found to have weighed down the Z key for 103 hours between June and September 2024. Another case involved Niall Thubron, a former detective with Durham Police, who pressed the I key more than 16,000 times on a single day in December 2024. Thubron resigned before he could be sacked.
Greater Manchester Police alone has identified 28 keyboard jammers. The force’s chief constable, Stephen Watson, has banned working from home while an investigation is ongoing.
Keyboard jamming involves placing an object, such as a stapler, on a keyboard to simulate typing activity. This practice emerged as a way to appear active on monitoring software like Microsoft Teams, which marks users as “inactive” after five minutes of no keyboard or mouse activity.
Employers are increasingly investing in tools that track actual work output rather than just keyboard activity. Meanwhile, some workers have turned to AI apps to record meetings, take notes, and draft emails while attending to other tasks.
