Proactive Release of Breath Screening Test issue information

Background to Alcohol Breath Testing

1. The Road Policing Investment Programme 2024–27 (RPIP) is the agreement between New Zealand Police, the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and the Ministry of Transport, which sees Police carry out agreed land transport enforcement activities.  It provides funding from the National Land Transport Fund to Police for those activities. The programme specifies several key road policing activities expected of Police which contribute to reducing deaths and serious injuries on our roads. Many of those have agreed levels of activity to be delivered.
    
2. Impairment from alcohol remains one of the leading contributors to death and serious injury on New Zealand roads. A high volume and highly visible breath testing regime is a critical component of the effort to reduce the harm from drink-driving. Accordingly, Police is expected to prioritise impairment related activities and carry out 3.3 million passive breath tests and breath screening tests in the first two years of the RPIP and 3.5 million tests in the outyear with a portion of each year’s tests conducted during high risk alcohol times.

Breath testing device and process

3. To carry out breath tests, Police uses a hand-held device capable of completing passive tests, screening tests, and evidential tests. The current device was first gazetted for use in New Zealand in 2015 and has been operational since then. For evidential and auditing purpose staff must enter their unique employee number (known as a ‘QID’) into the device prior to using it operationally.
    
4. The breath testing device stores data for every test, including GPS coordinates, date, time, device number, a unique test number, test type, and QID. The data is periodically downloaded from the device. Devices are unable to validate the selected QID.
    
5. After inputting or selecting their QID, an officer conducts a passive breath test by selecting the test type from the menu. Once the button on the device is pressed, it takes about 15-20 seconds to return a result and is reset, ready for the next test.
    
6. At a compulsory breath test checkpoint, with queued vehicles, cycle times between two consecutive tests is longer due to the officer stopping vehicles, approaching drivers, and conducting tests. This will typically take up to 60 seconds, though several minutes may elapse between consecutive tests for various reasons.

Discovery and confirmation of Irregular Breath Tests

7. In late August 2025, the National Road Policing Centre identified a pattern of breath tests that appeared to differ from normal operational expectations. The series of tests appeared to have been recorded from a vehicle in motion.
    
8. The team developed an algorithm to examine the time and physical distance between tests. Where two or more sequential tests from the same device were 90 seconds or less apart from each other and the distance between each of those tests divided by the time between them resulted in a travel speed of more than 20 km/h were found, those tests were flagged as irregular.
    
9. Initial development, testing, and validation of the algorithm and data results identified 26,599 breath tests conducted across the country (equating to 0.56% of all tests) which were likely to have been recorded while in motion.
    
10. A further extraction of data to the end of September 2025 identified 4,362 further irregular tests. This brought the total irregular tests for the period 1 July 2024 to 30 September 2025 to 30,961 tests. This is 0.58% of all breath tests performed.

Employment Investigations

11. Given the seriousness of this matter and its potential to impact confidence in the Road Policing Investment Programme and our shared road safety goals, Police initiated an internal employment investigation into approximately 120 individuals.
     
12. A sanctions framework to support this process was designed, drawing from previous models used in response to misconduct. The framework provides guidance to decision-makers on the most appropriate process for individuals.
     
13. Police will not be releasing any further information regarding the employment process. Details related to these investigations are withheld under section 9(2)(a) of the Official Information Act 1982 to protect individuals’ privacy.
     
14. The Police Executive determined that all constabulary staff must complete a mandatory online training module on alcohol breath testing. On 6 November 2025, a refreshed Breath Screening Test eLearning module was added to the learning requirements for all constabulary staff to be completed by staff by 4 December 2025. 
     
15. Police continues to monitor any tests picked up by the algorithm, remove them from reporting and deal with staff appropriately.