The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is requiring law enforcement agencies statewide to verify the accuracy of their breathalyzer instruments after discovering calibration errors that rendered hundreds of DWI breath tests inadmissible in court.

The issue first came to light in Aitkin County, where defense attorney Chuck Ramsay found that an officer failed to properly calibrate a DataMaster machine despite documentation claiming otherwise. That discovery led to the dismissal of several DWI cases and the invalidation of 73 breath tests.

“And while the documentation shows that the officer changed this gas cylinder, the control, his body-worn camera, revealed that he did not,” Ramsay said.

Ramsay – who spoke with Minnesota Now on Monday – said that without a properly-documented con

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