Court Rules Demotion Justified for Police Officer Who Visited Gym 222 Times During Working Hours

A police officer who was penalized with a demotion after being caught using a gym more than 200 times during working hours has lost the appeal, overturning a lower court ruling in his favor.

The Busan High Court Administrative Division 5 announced today (October 15) that it has overturned the first-instance ruling in favor of the plaintiff and dismissed the lawsuit filed by police officer A against the head of the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency to cancel the demotion.

Officer A was promoted to inspector in November 2022 and worked as a team leader at a police station in Busan.

An internal audit revealed that between January 2023 and April 2024, he left his workplace without permission a total of 222 times between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM on weekdays to work out at a gym.

It was also uncovered that during this period, he applied for a total of 12 hours of overtime across four occasions, wrongfully collecting 166,000 won in overtime allowances.

Consequently, the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency issued a demotion disciplinary action against Officer A.

During the inspection process, Officer A filed a lawsuit claiming that obtaining his gym access logs and closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage without his consent or a court warrant was a violation of the Personal Information Protection Act.

The first-instance court ruled that the data acquired by the police without his consent or a court warrant constituted unlawfully collected evidence and thus could not be used as the basis for disciplinary action.

Stating that Officer A's statements made on the basis of this data could also not be used as evidence, the court canceled the demotion.

However, the appellate court reached a different conclusion.

The appellate court judged that it was difficult to conclude that the police's acquisition and use of the data provided by the gym for disciplinary purposes constituted a violation of the Personal Information Protection Act.

It explained that even if the evidence had been collected unlawfully, its admissibility is not uniformly denied in administrative litigation.

The court stated, "The information in question pertains to the movement and whereabouts indicating that the police officer was at the gym during working hours, which does not hold high value for protection given his status as a police official. On the other hand, utilizing this data for disciplinary action significantly contributes to establishing strict discipline among police officers."

The court also took into consideration that the gym voluntarily cooperated in submitting the data and that it was difficult to verify the specific usage details through other methods.

Regarding the level of disciplinary action, the court ruled, "The misconduct of leaving the workplace multiple times was witnessed by citizens, resulting in damage to the police organization's credibility. Therefore, the demotion cannot be seen as an abuse or excess of disciplinary discretion for losing objective validity significantly beyond socially accepted norms."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.