Victoria Police has revealed hundreds of thousands of preliminary breath tests have been falsified.
Over 258,000 preliminary breath tests held since 2013 have been falsified by officers placing a finger over the breathalyser straw or blowing into the straw themselves, police say.
Victoria Police held an investigation into the matter which surfaced in late 2017, poring over data from 1500 breathalysers and over 17.7 million tests to find 1.5% were falsely conducted.
The false testing is alleged to have been done by general duties and highway patrol officers, including rural areas which were over-represented.
Victoria Police also says the practice was not discovered in supervised drug and alcohol bus testing operations.
Professional standards command assistant commissioner Russell Barrett says the “complex and protracted intelligence assessment” has revealed the problem which puts motorists and the public at risk.
“I had not heard of our members engaging in such a practice, we let ourselves down, we’ve let the community down. It stops now,” Barrett says.
“The investigation will examine how this behaviour was allowed to occur and what we can do to enhance and improve our operational practice into the future.”
Barrett explains that no criminal or fraudulent behaviour has been attributed to the falsified breath tests.
“Similarly, there is nothing to suggest that any of this activity has impacted on any prosecutions,” he says.
“The question we all asked was ‘why?'” Barrett continues.
“There could be a number of reasons but the main rationale I believe is to hide or highlight productivity. Whatever reason our workforce may come up with, it isn’t acceptable.”
Victoria Police says it will put immediate compliance and monitoring controls in place.
“We are looking into a number of options for improving and increasing our internal controls and accountability in regard to our testing regime,” Barrett says.
“We are considering the feasibility of regular audits, the ability for the PBT (preliminary breath test) to include the detail of the operator and quality assurance measures.”
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