This recent news story I published to Copper Stopper, is, without question, the most brazen abuse of the police misconduct process I have seen this year. South Wales Police Chief Constable Jeremy Vaughan hijacked the system to install his preferred outcome, granting one of his officers immunity from discipline. In doing so, he has justified the excuse for every other officer who abuses the ‘working from home’ scheme and defrauds the public purse.
PC Blackman
The officer in question, PC Colin Blackman, admitted using so-called ‘lead keys’ – placing a weighted object on a keyboard to simulate typing – for a total of 105 hours over 42 days. The practice, well-known among police officers who are given the chance to work from home, is a crude way of faking productivity, while doing nothing.
In August of this year, another South Wales police officer – PC Matthew Jacobs – used the same process to cheat the same force out of 445 hours of pay – the equivalent of 117 full days – by using a cup of tea and – on other occasions – a bottle of water, to hold down a key on his keyboard while working from home. That case was also overseen by Jeremy Vaughan and the officer was dismissed. Vaughn described the behaviour as ‘intentional, deliberate and sustained’, adding that Jacobs’ conduct caused ‘reputational harm’ to the police.
So why has he chosen to exonerate PC Colin Blackman, who adopted precisely the same method of cheating the system, albeit with a slightly more creative excuse?
Blackman’s actions were discovered during a fifteen-month audit by the Anti-Corruption Unit, which found an abnormally high number of keystrokes on his device. The evidence was described as incontrovertible.
Blackman admitted the behaviour outright, telling investigators he used a can of soft drink and other items to hold down a key. He even admitted that his conduct amounted to gross misconduct – an admission which should, in any properly run process, have led to summary dismissal. But not in South Wales.
A Decision That Defies Logic
Instead of applying the same misconduct charges laid against PC Jacobs, South Wales Police’s Professional Standards Department (PSD) diluted the charge. Rather than pursue the obvious breach of Honesty and Integrity, they downgraded it to Discreditable Conduct, removing the element of deception.
Even more astonishingly, Chief Constable Vaughan invited Blackman during the hearing to withdraw his own confession of gross misconduct. Once Blackman did so, Vaughan declared the allegation ‘not proven’.
It was a remarkable reversal: a confession nullified mid-hearing by the very man charged with delivering an impartial verdict. Vaughan then relied on Blackman’s supervisor’s statement that he “didn’t feel deceived” and that Blackman “sometimes asked for more work” via messages. Those 25 messages, sent over six months, became the linchpin for exoneration.
The Chief Constable concluded that the officer was not avoiding work, was not deceitful, and that his use of lead keys was an innocent attempt to ‘show availability’. Such logic would be laughable were it not so perverse.
The Double Standard Across UK Forces
The excuse: ‘I was just showing I was available for work’, has been advanced and rejected by every other force where it has been tried. Officers in the Met, Kent, and Hampshire have all faced gross-misconduct findings and dismissal for identical behaviour. In each of those cases, the lead-key ruse was classed as deception, time fraud, and a breach of Honesty and Integrity.
So how is it that an officer in South Wales can fake 105 hours of activity, admit it, and walk away unpunished? Where is the fairness and consistency that the misconduct system is supposed to ensure? If honesty is a core standard of professional behaviour, it cannot apply differently depending on the Chief Constable’s mood or the political sensitivities of the force.
Vaughan’s ruling has set a precedent that undermines every disciplinary process in the country. It tells every officer that so long as you complete your quotas and occasionally ask for more work, you can fake your activity with impunity.
A System Designed to Fail
This case also highlights a deeper systemic flaw. Why does South Wales Police still rely on a system that can be defeated by a weighted key? Why does such activity not trigger an automated alert or lockout, as it does in many government departments? The fact that an officer could deceive the system for fifteen months exposes either staggering incompetence or wilful neglect.
An Ultra Vires Decision
Vaughan’s decision is not just morally corrupt – it is arguably unlawful. The chair of a misconduct hearing must act within the limits of the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020, the 2025 Amendment Regulations, the Guidance on Outcomes in Police Misconduct Proceedings and the Home Office Conduct and Performance Rules. These rules are explicit:
- The chair must determine whether the conduct amounts to misconduct or gross misconduct based on the evidence presented.
- The chair must apply the Guidance on Outcomes, which states that where an officer acts dishonestly, dismissal will almost invariably follow.
- The chair must act impartially and must not interfere with or influence the officer’s position.
By inviting Blackman to withdraw his confession, Vaughan over-reached his authority. The Regulations do not give him power to direct or suggest that an officer alter their plea. That conduct amounts to procedural impropriety, breaches the requirement of impartiality, and renders the decision ultra vires: beyond his lawful powers.
Discretionary powers under the Regulations are not absolute. They must be reasonable and proportionate, exercised to abide by the statutory rules: the priority of which is to maintain public confidence in policing. Vaughan’s actions achieved the opposite. They made a mockery of the process, destroyed public trust, and signalled to his own officers that dishonesty is negotiable.
Possible Misfeasance in Public Office
This case also raises the question of misfeasance in public office – a serious common-law tort that occurs when a public official wilfully acts unlawfully in the course of their duties, knowing their actions are likely to cause harm or are contrary to their lawful obligations.
Jeremy Vaughan was not acting solely as the Chief Constable of South Wales Police but also as the Chief Chair of the misconduct hearing. In those dual roles he held two separate positions of public trust: one as the head of the force, the other as the independent arbiter of disciplinary justice. He then exploited both positions to secure a pre-determined outcome – to protect the force’s reputation against clear evidence of dishonesty. This isn’t just placing the foxes in charge of the chicken coop; it’s giving them the run of the farm too.
By inviting an officer to withdraw a confession and then declaring the case ‘not proven’, Vaughan used his office for an improper purpose. To protect the reputation of the force and Vaughan’s personal reputation. This could be argued as misfeasance in public office.
Bias and Improper Purpose
The legal test for bias, established in Porter v Magill [2002] 2 AC 357, asks whether a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility of bias. In this case, that threshold is easily met. The Chief Constable, whose reputation depends on minimising disciplinary statistics, had every incentive to find the allegation unproven. By actively assisting the officer to retract his admission, he showed bias and interference. This was not a proper adjudication – it was damage control.
Grounds for Judicial Review
There are clear grounds on which this decision could be challenged by judicial review:
- Procedural Impropriety: Vaughan’s intervention in the officer’s plea breached the requirement for impartiality and procedural fairness.
- Irrationality: The finding of ‘not proven’ despite incontrovertible evidence of falsified work activity is irrational in the Wednesbury sense.*
- Improper Purpose: The decision appears aimed at protecting the force and the officer, not at upholding the standards of public trust.
- Ultra Vires: The Chief Constable acted beyond the powers conferred by the Regulations and Guidance.
In the absence of South Wales Police challenging this decision, it is possible for a member of the public or a civil rights organisation to bring a judicial review. There would be an arguable case that the misconduct process in this instance was corrupted by bias and illegality.
The problem, however, lies in ‘legal standing’. Judicial review requires that the claimant have a ‘sufficient interest’ in the matter. A member of the public concerned with police accountability might well qualify in principle, but in practice the courts are guarded about granting such standing. They tend to treat public-interest watchdogs as outsiders unless they are public departments or formal parties to the proceedings.
And even if standing were established, the claimant would face the systemic pro-police bias of the judiciary – a bias that has long been evident in rulings that bend over backwards to excuse police wrongdoing. Time and again, judges manipulate the law and shown undue favour to officers whose actions would be criminal in any other context. The courts remain an extension of the establishment: reflexively protective of public institutions, especially the police, misinterpreting the law to preserve the status quo. Any challenge that threatens to expose systemic corruption in the police misconduct process will almost inevitably be met with judicial defensiveness dressed up as an academic interpretation of the law.
The Misconduct Circus
This case exposes the true nature of the police misconduct process: a circus, designed to appease the public that the police take corruption seriously. In reality, many outcomes are pre-engineered for the benefit of the institution. The process is highly selective. The police decide for themselves who will be thrown to the wolves and who will be shielded. Cases are pursued or dropped not in the public interest but in the interests of reputation management. Misconduct cases are a numbers game, fulfilling minimum quotas to keep government departments satisfied that the worst of the police are being weeded out.
This is why hurt feelings – an inappropriate joke, a careless remark, or a politically incorrect comment – are pursued with zeal, while genuine deception, abuse of power, misuse of force and misconduct in public office are quietly brushed aside. The misconduct system has become a stage for the police’s obsession with identity politics and so-called progressive ideology. It punishes hurt feelings among officers more readily than it punishes the misuse of force, corruption, or deceit against the public. The system is designed to assert the police’s desired perception of themselves, not to remove corrupt or violent officers from their ranks.
The misconduct system is not fit for purpose. As long as Chief Constables are allowed to oversee the misconduct process, and apply their own preferred outcome, it is not justice – it is theatre. And the audience is us, the public, expected to believe that the performance is real.
NOTES:
* The Wednesbury rule is a standard of unreasonableness used in assessing an application for judicial review of a public authority’s decision. A reasoning or decision is Wednesbury unreasonable (or irrational) if it is so unreasonable that no reasonable person acting reasonably could have made it (Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation (1948) 1 KB 223). The test is a different (and stricter) test than merely showing that the decision was unreasonable.
