Police have lied about what time they took my blood

Convicted Driver Insurance

Reuser2003

New Member
I was arrested over an hour after driving in my own home.
The police have lied about lots of aspects of the whole incident, however the one lie I don’t understand is they claim to have taken the blood at least an hour after they did.

I last drank at 10.15pm which was a bottle of wine in my home. After arrest and a 20min ride to the police station I was booked in straight away and taken the the breathalyser room. After a couple of goes they claimed the machine wasn’t working and made me sign consent for a blood test.

They then said the nurse was on her way and I saw her, didntvr dna and finger prints, then went to another room with an officer and she took blood.

The police claim I was in a holding cell for an hour prior to the blood test. This never happened. They have no CCTV of this event and also claim the clock on the breathalyser room cctv was innaccurate.

I had only had 2 large glasses of wine before driving home over a period of 2 hours 40 minutes.

So they took the blood 2hours after I drank the bottle of wine at home but claim 3hours.

Why would they lie? Keep in mind they have already been shown to have lied about what time I was driving and what time they arrived at my house. Non of the officer had body cams and they also failed to interview the person who’s house I was at or collect CCTV at her house that showed what time I arrived and left. The only person they interviewed was my ex wife who hadn’t seen me since the previous morning.
 
I to, am puzzled about why the police would make an error of 1 hour in their timings.
could it be that there was no adjustment for British Summer Time?
You should have been given one of the blood samples when you were released. What is the time on that? It is recorded by the nurse when she takes the sample, it is not timed by the police.
You can write to the police station where you were detained and request a copy of your custody record. The timings on that are recorded automatically, from the time of your arrival to the time of your departure. The times cannot be altered later.
This can be requestedup to 12 months after your detention. Write giving your name, address, date of birth and time and date of your detention.
If indeed these times show a difference of an hour from that indicated on the drink drive paperwork then the police have some awkward questions to answer, but there would have to be a number of officers, and the nurse, involved in a conspiracy for there to be such an error, for no apparent gain.
 
Well, I blew 119 at home which is impossible, and luckily when I went to the police station they gave up with the big machine saying it wasn’t working.
Basically I had been at a friends for 2hrs and 40mins and had two glasses of wine.
On returning home my neighbour had blocked my allocated parking space for about the 100th time. I knocked on the door to tell him to learn to park. At this he punched me. I landed backwards and smashed my head on the ground.... there was a witness and she called the police. I didn’t know they had been called.
In my house I grabbed the wine and drank the lot in about 15-20mins. The police turned up they questioned him and he said I was drunk... not that he had punched me.
When I eventually spoken to them it was an hour since I got out of the car but I’d dumped a bottle of wine down me.
The blood came back at 184.. They started lying in the interview. Saying the incident happened 15mins later than it did... CCTV shows this but also claimed the police arrived 3mins later( 6 of them to a small village in Kent) and that I was stood outside when they got there. The call log also shows this wasn’t true so the officer interviewing would have known this.
They didn’t give me the slip signed by the police officer regarding the time the blood was taken until 8months later. This happened in Nov 2016 and there have been 3 cancelled trial dates. They also failed to collect other cctv I told them about and talk to the friend I’d been with. They went to my ex wife’s house who if not seen that night and basically tried to dig for dirt.
I saw the nurse no later than 12am but they are claiming I was in a holding cell for an hour prior to this.. and the blood was taken @ 1.10am

My tox report shows me at the extreme end of possible at 184... but I’m thinking as alcohol absorbs quicker than it leaves the blood stream this is a big deal. I’ve never driven over the limit and all forward calculations prior to me getting out of the car show I would be nowhere near the limit. I suspect they thought the blood would come back similar to the breathylser and wanted to slam dunk me. I know they can be unreliable but not more than double the real level. They say at the time I would have been about 1&1/2 the limit... 119 is nearly 4x the limit.
 
It’s been longer than 12 months...
part of the problem is that even the guy who assaulted me, says I came out after the police arrived... If I hadn’t pointed out the day after my interview that the Co-op where I’d popped in on the way back and is about 40secods drive from my house as it’s on the development, they would have stuck with the 10.10pm incident time. The two witnesses including the guy who hit me both gave a earlier time for the incident. The cctv showed I was in my home 20minutes before the police arrived.
My ex wife told me that the investigating officer had already decided I was guilty.

The treatment I received from the police was disgusting. I was not interviewed until 1pm the next day. Never offered food or drink and despite being in absolute agony with what i was convinced was a broken bone in my foot was told “if your foot is broken, don’t stand on it”. The custody report claims simply that I was DEMANDING to be let out.

The fact the PC who ignored the info on other CCTV which would have shown where I was all night prior to driving home, is the one who has also claimed I was in a holding cell when I never was and the one who signed off the time of the blood test. When the form was given to me the following June... it was brand new, not something that had been sat in a file for 8months.

Of corse they will say the video from the holding cell has been deleted... but if there ever was one would there be an electronic record of it? Also can we demand they recover it if it existed? Surely such videos can still be recoverd off the hard drive?

I’ve requested the Nurses own records as it was a quiet Monday night. I know for a fact I saw her straight after I left the breathalyser room.

Also I’d be stunned if a video timer/clock in a police station was liable to wrong!!

This has destroyed my faith in the police.
They never even took the bottle as evidence, yet remarked to my wife that there were 4 empty wine bottles in my place.
 
Also re British summer time... if that was the case it had been wrong for over a week with no one noticing. However is it likely that it firstly wasn’t a system that automatically updates and secondly wouldn’t anyone else taken in there since or after they discovered this also have been informed it was incorrect. I’m sure I wasn’t the first drink driving suspect taken to Tonbrige in over a week....

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I simply believe that because I blew 119, they thought I was 100% guilty and the lies they were telling to make sure I got absolutey walloped in court would never be examined. They must have been very disappointed once the blood results came back and also more than a little worried.

At 137 on blood which is what they claim I was at the time of driving I’d have been blitzed!! The Co-op CCTV shows me perfectly I’m control of my legs and also driving in and out perfectly sensibly. That’s effectly a very large glass of wine over.

They can’t now say “we lied initially” can they as that’s a sackable offence and it’s also hardly unknown for police officers to conspire together to protect their own or convict people.
 
And in another bizarre element they claim they took DNA and Prints the following day???
I am not just bemused as I have had 6pts ever on my licence since passing at 17(29 years ago) and none for over 11years, have zero criminal record, a reputation for being a really nice kind hearted guy.... I’m hardly public enemy N01
 
I am trying to see through what you are saying, to get at the relevant facts.....
you blew 119 on the breath test at home, not this is a hand held device which is not reliable, it only gives an indication and you cannot be prosecuted on this. BUT, it could have indicated a high reading because you had recently consumed alcohol so that would tend to support your claim to have drunk a bottle of wine after you got home and before the police arrived.
The police say that you provided a blood sample at 1.10am, whereas you say that it was provided at 12.10am.
What would the police gain out of saying that it was an hour later than it actually was? It came back as 184, and from that, it seems that they have done a back calculation to indicate that at the time you drove you were 1.5 times the limit, so 120 in blood. If they are starting to count back from an hour later than the sample was really provided, then their calculation has an extra hour in it for your body to get rid of alcohol so it should have been higher, so their “lies” have helped you get a lower reading in their back calculations!
if you look at the custody record, you will see various times recorded on it by the custody officer, anyone visiting you in the cells and the time you saw the nurse. The nurse will have signed the blood sample and timed / dated it. She will have also signed a certificate to say that she took the sample at (time / date) with your consent.
There will be a statement from the Laboratory receiving your sample which quotes the time and date that the label says the sample was taken.
this cannot be altered months later because it is recorded when it is received at the laboratory.
on the custody record will be other signatures, certainly from the duty inspectors who carried out your review at 6 and 15 hours. (They will have been different officers)
If you feel that the paperwork has been forged later, that is an awful lot of people who have had to be a part of it and you will struggle to persuade the court that they would all conspire to ‘fit you up’ and in the process get a lower estimate of what your reading would have been at the time of the driving.
You may feel aggrieved that the police did not follow up on witnesses or CCTV, but you need to understand what the law says about ‘hip flask ‘ defences in Drink Drive cases. The law says that what is in a suspects alcohol when they are arrested is presumed to be what was in their system when they drove. If their defence is that the consumed alcohol after driving then it it up to them to satisfy the court that on the balance of probabilities they did consume alcohol AND that it made the difference to them being over the legal limit. It is not the police job to investigate your defence, that is the job of the defence...... it flies in the face of the general principals of British law - innocent until proven guilty - but all I can do is advise the law as it stands in ‘hip flask defences’.
You should concentrate your efforts on trying to present evidence of post incident drinking, because arguments about how you were later treated, however angry they made you feel, will not cut any ice with the magistrates who will only be concerned with the evidence about your driving, your reading and when the alcohol consumption took place.
 
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In respect of the CCTV, it is normal for recordings to be deleted after a period of time. This varies between forces but I would think that 28days - 3 months is the norm. If a specific complaint is raised or a request for the video:evidence is received then yes, that part of the CCTV can be preserved. After the normal retention time then it is wiped and would not be recoverable.
 
The point is that alcohol is absorbed quicker than its dispelled. So an hour earlier means that at 1.10am my blood count would have been lower than at 12.10am, given I’d not had a drink for 3 hours by 1.10am.

The Lies do leave me bemused. To say they took my prints and DNA @ 13.30pm on the 8th rather than 12.00pm on the 8th is bizarre. As is inventing an hour in a holding cell.

The alcohol would be absorbed quicker but not be disposed of by my body quicker given I’d not eaten since 6pm on the 6th.

Also the officer says I smelt of alcohol when he first spoke to me ( about 30 mins since I got out of the car) but didn’t say Seemed drunk. At the police station they claim probably correctly I was unsteady( about hour and 10 later. The CCTV about 20 mins before I first spoke to the officer shows me perfectly sober.

Given the reading a heavy drinker would not be swaying at the level they measured... I wasn’t swaying at 120 at all... my point being as I’m not a heavy drinker I’d have been blitzed in the co-op at 120.

They lied from the start to try and illiminate the chance of me having drank at home... this has already been shown.
 
The 120 is something of a red herring as it was not on an evidential breath test device.
the police version is that you provided a blood sample at 1.10am and it showed 184 in blood.
backtracking 3 hours they say that your reading 3 hours before would have been 120.
your version is that you provided a sample at 12.10am and it was 184, so when you were driving TWO hours before it would have been higher, at about 140. Either way, you were not drunk so why would the police officer say that you were?
it really doesn’t matter when you had your fingerprints and DNA taken. Presumably the time for this was recorded on the custody record and you have timed it by a clock that may or may not have been reading correctly.
I will stress it again, you need to concentrate on what evidence you can gather to show that you consumed alcohol after driving, AND that it made the difference to you being over the limit. That is what your “hip flash defence” relies on. Anything else is spurious and diverts you from what you need to do.
 
The time for my DNA and finger print tests is 1.30pm on the Tuesday... they actually took them the previous evening. Well, the Nurse did.
The Rox report does back my claim, but just. However the fact is I could have had another large glass of wine before I drove home and still have been under the limit comfortably.
With a back calculation time line is all important and the police have been willing to lie about this.
Also they ignored the evidence which of course would have helped my case when I had not been charged... so it was their responsibility to interview witnesses and gather CCTV. Their job is to investigate the claim, not to prove someone guilty or innocent.
 
I have already explained the law in respect of hip flask defence. They have evidence from the witness that you smelled of intoxicants, and a reading showing that you were over the limit. The case is then made out. It is for the DEFENCE to shown that the presumption that what is in a persons sample when they are tested is what was in their body when they drove.
This is a quote from a leading defence company on this:
You may think this is simple; you just tell the Court you had a drink when you got home/to the pub/reached your friend’s house and that you would have stayed the night or got a taxi home. After all, how could the prosecution prove that isn’t what happened?
However, this is where the burden of proof shifts. It is generally for the prosecution to prove the accused’s guilt. But this burden of proof sometimes switches to the accused, so the onus is on them to prove what they are saying in their defence.
When someone wishes to rely on the defence of drinking alcohol after they drove, it is up to them to provide evidence of this to the Court. The Court must be convinced that it is more likely than not that this is what actually happened.
https://www.sleeblackwell.co.uk/leg...ving-post-drive-consumption-hip-flask-defence


Drink driving in this respect is different to other cases where the police investigate all circumstances before deciding to charge. Your solicitor, if competent, should realise this and be helping to focus on the points that need to be proved for your defence to succeed. If you do not have a solicitor then I would urge you to get one to help with the legal points. The other issues you have talked about are fine to get sympathy from your mates in the pub, but they will not assist with your case in court.
i am not trying to be dismissive about what you say happened. Just trying to get you to realise that they are irrelevant to the outcome in court.
I have extensive experience in working in a Custody environment (albeit not in Kent) and was surprised when you said that your fingerprints were taken by a nurse. Just out of curiosity, I have checked with Tonbridge custody unit and as I thought, there is no way that a nurse has ever been trained or would be authorised to take fingerprints from a suspect. It may be that your recollections of the events are not as clear as you thought.
 
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