Commissioner split the allegations and found management partly to blame
A Sheriff's Officer was fired for time theft, but a NSW commission found his employer's management failures shielded him from most misconduct charges.
The Industrial Relations Commission of New South Wales handed down its decision on 15 April 2026 in Tohi v Department of Communities and Justice, dismissing an unfair dismissal application brought by Solomone Tohi, a Sheriff's Officer in the Newcastle region terminated on 30 June 2025 after 11 years of service without a single prior disciplinary issue.
The case turned on seven allegations drawn from CCTV footage at Toronto Court House covering 20 December 2024 to 7 February 2025. Tohi was accused of failing to screen people entering the court on roughly 50 occasions, not wand-searching about 35 people who set off the walk-through metal detector, using his mobile phone at the screening area around 39 times, closing the security checkpoint early on two days while court was still sitting, recording inaccurate finish times on his flex sheets to gain approximately five hours and 17 minutes of flex time (later corrected to approximately four hours and 47 minutes after the Commissioner identified a calculating error), and through all of the above, putting court users, judiciary and colleagues at risk.
Tohi admitted to most of the conduct. He acknowledged letting court staff, police and lawyers through without full screening, saying it was based on a long-standing informal understanding about operational discretion. He accepted his phone use was inappropriate and agreed the checkpoint should not have been closed early.
Commissioner O'Sullivan, however, drew a line through the allegations. On the screening lapses, phone use and early closures, the Commissioner found these did not warrant termination. Evidence showed management had known about widespread non-compliance for over a year. The Officer in Charge, Daniel De La Paz, admitted in cross-examination he had never spoken to Tohi directly about the issues. Region Commander Andrew Buteaux conceded he had been aware of non-compliance since as early as February 2024. The CCTV footage also captured another Sheriff's Officer engaging in nearly identical phone use.
The Commissioner found this conduct "arose from workplace custom and systemic management failures, not wilful misconduct" and that a warning would have been the appropriate response.
The flex time allegation landed differently. The Commissioner accepted that a degree of give and take operated in the flex system — Tohi started before 8:30am on a number of occasions but only ever recorded 8:30am — and on three entries where he recorded roughly 30 extra minutes each, accepted his explanation: he had noted "nil lunch" on his flex sheets, consistent with evidence that the court often sat through lunch and the timekeeping system could not accommodate a skipped break.
Two other entries were harder to explain. On 20 December 2024 and 7 February 2025, both Fridays, CCTV showed Tohi leaving court at 1.26pm and 2.35pm while his flex sheets recorded finish times of 3.30pm and 3.45pm. He held approved secondary employment on Fridays with a 3pm start. The Commissioner found it implausible he would not have remembered leaving that early and concluded the entries were deliberate. He did not, however, find that Tohi was working at his secondary job during the hours falsely recorded.
"Ultimately, knowingly claiming additional hours worked is time theft," Commissioner O'Sullivan wrote, finding the conduct constituted misconduct under the Government Sector Employment Act 2013.
Despite Tohi's clean record, positive character evidence and difficulty finding new employment, the Commissioner held that dismissal was not harsh given the seriousness of the dishonesty and the trust placed in a Sheriff's Officer working unsupervised at remote locations. The application was dismissed.
The decision as originally published on 15 April omitted the word "not" from its concluding paragraph, initially reading as though the dismissal was unfair. A corrective amendment under r 9.4 of the Industrial Relations Commission Rules 2022 was issued the following day.
The decision puts HR leaders on notice. Where management is aware of non-compliance and does not address it directly with the individual, a commission may refuse to treat that conduct as grounds for termination. But even modest dishonesty in time recording can sustain a dismissal, particularly in roles carried out with significant autonomy and trust.
