A trainee police officer doctored a Covid-19 lateral flow test with red pen in a bid to get time off work.
Lancashire Police constable Ahmed Anwari fiddled the test to take advantage of isolation rules in place at the time, but his bosses were immediately suspicious due to the unconvincing results.
Anwari was asked to complete another test on a Microsoft Teams video call, but again failed to convince that the result was positive. Anwari resigned from his role the following day but misconduct proceedings were launched anyway, LancsLive reports.
READ MORE: Police officer quits after accidentally sending bizarre WhatsApp video of genitals to colleagues
A public hearing took place at Ormskirk Police Station on Monday (June 20) where Chief Constable Chris Rowley ruled that Anwari would have been sacked for gross misconduct had he not already quit the force. Chief Constable Rowley was told the trainee officer informed his line manager of a positive result on December 13, 2020, and sent a photograph of the test as evidence.
However, according to a report of the hearing, “it was clear that test had been manually altered with a drawn red line”. He was invited to take another test on a video call with an Inspector Dixon, and attempted to claim that test was also positive.
But during the call he went on to admit to the inspector that it was actually negative and that he’d been hoping to take time off work.
Anwari was informed of proceedings but wrote to the panel to inform that he would not attend or send representation. After a brief hearing Chief Constable Rowley said that the failure to respond was taken as acceptance of the allegations of gross misconduct.
He went on to say that policing standards must be upheld in order to maintain the confidence and trust of the public. He ruled that the accusations of gross misconduct were proved and that had Mr Anwari not already resigned, the appropriate sanction would have been dismissal.
Anwari's name was added to the College of Policing's barred list, meaning he is banned from holding any policing role in the UK.
