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A former Derbyshire Constabulary detective has been jailed for four years and two months after admitting stealing £87,174.05, €1,629 and £114 in Albanian Lek from the force while working as an exhibits officer in a specialist team investigating high-level drugs gangs.
Michelle Reason, 54, who is known as Kirsty and lives in Buxton, pleaded guilty to theft and misconduct in public office at Mansfield Magistrates' and County Court on 9 November. Daily Dazzling Dawn understands she will now be subject to Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings brought to recover the money that was stolen.
Reason began siphoning cash in January 2022 after she dealt with a large cash seizure in the region of £350,000. As exhibits officer she was one of only a small number of people with access to the safe that contained hundreds of thousands of pounds in seized currency.
She initially took £15,000. Daily Dazzling Dawn learned that she told officers she began taking money on a regular basis after discovering that nobody had noticed the initial theft, and continued doing so until she left the force in December 2025.
Her crimes began to unravel following her departure, when officers reviewing stored exhibits in preparation for an upcoming court case started to question where the cash had gone. Reason, knowing that the time was up, attended St Mary's Wharf Police Station in Derby and confessed to taking the money.
The 54-year-old gave a full account of the cash that had been taken, even bringing with her the empty evidence bags in which the money had originally been seized. Her candour at that stage stood in contrast to the prolonged deception that had preceded it.
Reason told officers initially that the money was stolen to fund debts she had accrued. However, further work showed that she had spent money on a car, a holiday, and tickets to events, painting a picture of sustained personal enrichment rather than desperation.
Daily Dazzling Dawn learned that Temporary Deputy Chief Constable Michelle Shooter said: "Michelle Reason was placed in a position of trust as a Detective Constable. She broke the trust that we as a force put in her – and broke the trust that public puts in officers to conduct themselves in a right and proper way."
She added that officers and staff who find themselves in financial difficulty are duty bound to make that clear to the force, due to the potential risk of being improperly influenced or blackmailed, and are able to access support and guidance from both their immediate line manager and the wider force.
"Instead, Reason used her position of trust to take that money – but it was clear that she did not simply take this money to satisfy those debts, but rather to fund a lifestyle that she would have been otherwise unable to achieve," she said. "Her actions are a disgrace. Individuals who are willing to act in such a way have no place in policing and we will do all we can to root them out and bring them to justice."
The case has renewed scrutiny of the internal controls that govern seized assets in specialist police units, where access to evidence safes is necessarily restricted and reconciliation is often left to the same small pool of officers who handle the cash. The delay in detecting the losses, which ran from January 2022 until the review that followed Reason's departure, will raise questions about how frequently exhibits are audited and whether discrepancies are escalated quickly enough.
For Derbyshire Constabulary, the reputational cost extends beyond the sum stolen. Evidence integrity sits at the heart of prosecutions against organised crime groups, and any suggestion that seized exhibits can be tampered with without immediate detection carries implications for cases already before the courts.
Reason's early guilty plea spared the force the expense of a trial, but the Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings now under way will determine how much of the £87,174.05, the €1,629 and the Albanian Lek can be clawed back from her assets. She begins her sentence having admitted that she exploited a position of trust for more than three years, and having been told in open court that her conduct has no place in policing.
