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
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
![\"Superintendent](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/superintendent-steve-greally-2SMPUBYFDJEIFHLJEWVCTW5WPE.jpg\")
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Superintendent Steve Greally (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police will not investigate how many staff were involved in 12,000 additional “irregular” breath tests, saying it would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20784,67,42,43,40,38,41,39,112],"class_list":["post-445359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alcohol","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445359","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=445359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}