{"id":445242,"date":"2026-05-26T01:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T01:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/445242\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T01:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T01:52:13","slug":"police-say-staff-investigation-into-additional-irregular-breath-tests-impractical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/445242\/","title":{"rendered":"Police say staff investigation into additional irregular breath tests ‘impractical’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Police<\/p>\n

\nRNZ earlier revealed about 130 police officers were under investigation throughout the country after 30,000 alcohol breath tests were “falsely or erroneously recorded”.
\nPhoto: RNZ\n<\/p>\n

Police will not investigate how many staff were involved in 12,000 additional “irregular” breath tests<\/a> saying it would be “impractical”.<\/p>\n

RNZ revealed last year that about 130 police officers were under investigation throughout the country after 30,000 alcohol breath tests were “falsely or erroneously recorded”.<\/p>\n

The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) halted $12 million worth of funding until it was satisfied police had met their breath test targets.<\/p>\n

NZTA commissioned an independent analysis of breath testing data to try and identify the full scale of falsely recorded tests.<\/p>\n

Do you know more? Email sam.sherwood@rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n

That report was released to RNZ on Friday. The review found there were a total of 42,678 irregular breath tests, 12,000 more than initially suspected.<\/p>\n

In response to questions from RNZ, police’s director of road policing Superintendent Steve Greally said no additional staff were being investigated.<\/p>\n

“Police had already identified specific testing recorded while in a moving vehicle and held those staff accountable.<\/p>\n

\"National<\/p>\n

\nSuperintendent Steve Greally.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Alexander Robertson\n<\/p>\n

“The purpose of the additional analysis was to determine the likely extent of irregular testing across static breath testing (i.e. testing recorded while an officer was stationary).”<\/p>\n

Greally said the 12,000 additional tests represented the “likely number of irregular tests” based on a statistical analysis agreed to between Police, NZTA and the independent reviewer.<\/p>\n

“To identify specific individual officers would have required investigating every officer and every checkpoint, which would have been impractical.”<\/p>\n

Greally said police had undertaken “extensive reassurance work” across the organisation since the issue was revealed in September.<\/p>\n

“We also acknowledge the findings from the independent review, and have adopted measures to ensure our practices and data are accurate and reliable.<\/p>\n

“Police has strengthened our systems and reinforced the high standards expected of our people. Police expected that given there was a number of falsified mobile breath tests undertaken, that there would also likely be a proportion of falsified static tests.”<\/p>\n

An NZTA spokesperson earlier told RNZ police had met their targets.<\/p>\n

“With the irregular breath tests removed from reporting, a total of 3,178,981 breath screening tests were conducted by Police for the period covering Q1-Q3 of the 2025\/26 financial year (1 July 2025 to 31 Mar 2026), exceeding the financial year to date target of 2,475,000 by 703,981 (28 percent above target).”<\/p>\n

The agency had authorised $18 million of funding to police.<\/p>\n

“NZTA is continuing to work with NZ Police to ensure ongoing confidence in reporting of road policing activity through the Road Policing Investment Programme (RPIP),” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RNZ earlier revealed about 130 police officers were under investigation throughout the country after 30,000 alcohol breath tests…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-445242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}