Is the CMI Intoxilyzer 8000 accurate in determing possible DUI's?
Florida- The $8,000 study, put together in three days, was part of a broader push to save the reputation of the embattled Intoxilyzer 8000, FDLE records show. And in December, FDLE's alcohol testing guru Laura Barfield came to a Sarasota County courtroom for a hearing and presented results of the drunken employee experiment to a panel of judges, saying it proved the machines were accurate. But the study might not even be worth the $330 bar bill.
At the hearing, judges deciding the fate of the machine in Sarasota and Manatee counties seemed skeptical of even considering the study, in part because bloodwork was still at the lab and the examination was not yet finalized.
Beyond that, statistics experts say there are concerns about how the study was conducted, whether it has any scientific validity, or whether it proves what it intended to.
"That doesn't really address the problem," said Dr. John Robinson, a biostatistics consultant with expertise in health care. "It's only performed at one time, with a small group of people."
A Herald-Tribune article in October showed how flawed machines stayed in service across the state for years, unquestioned, sometimes providing impossible results about how much breath was blown into them.
Breath-test results in about 100 Manatee and Sarasota county DUI cases were thrown out as a result. A defense expert who examined one machine in Venice found the breath volume issue was skewing breath-alcohol readings.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120118/article/120119530?google_editors_picks=true
CMI, refused to reveal details of how the Intoxilyzer 8000 works — even after orders from judges telling the company to do so — so that DUI defendants could hire experts to check it out. http://www.alcoholtest.com/
The Kentucky company's long refusal to provide the device's software code, despite unpaid and mounting daily fines for contempt of court, makes me suspicious. Clearly, technicians who do not work for the company or the police should be allowed to check that complicated device's design inside and out, especially its secret software. Defendants should have a right to check for flaws the company might not reveal.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement should be really irked at CMI about that refusal to obey judges. After all, FDLE has been, in effect, the company's top sales rep in Florida.
FDLE approved that breath tester and made Florida's police agencies a monopoly market for CMI. Police here are not allowed to use any of the devices made by rival companies.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110511/COLUMNIST/110519879