Vic Police 'can't outsource integrity'
Victoria's police chief says "you can't outsource your integrity" following a damning corruption review and calls for a third party to investigate complaints against officers.
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton says his team's reputation has taken a battering following a string of scandals, including recent criticisms from the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission.
It audited 59 investigations by the Professional Standards Command, the force's ethical standards body, and found almost all did not explicitly identify or address conflicts of interest between investigators and accused police.
While Mr Ashton concedes there's work to do to improve complaints processes, he says calls to outsource their handling "is a recipe for disaster".
"Culturally, that is just going to be an out for us ... and we'll just get worse in terms of integrity, not better," he told 3AW on Thursday.
"You can't outsource your integrity. You've got to actually own it. It's got to be part of everything we do every day."
Premier Daniel Andrews told ABC radio he had confidence in the Professional Standards Command's complaints and disciplinary processes.
Alongside conflict of interest issues, the IBAC report released earlier in June found many allegations were inappropriately classified and not passed onto to the anti-corruption watchdog.
The findings came a month after a scandalous police audit which found 1.5 per cent of more than 17.7 million roadside breath tests since 2012 had been faked.
Officers either placed a finger over the straw entry hole or blew into the straw themselves for 258,463 tests over the five years.
"If most people did an audit and had a 98.5 per cent compliance rate, they'd be doing handstands," Mr Ashton told 3AW.
"But for us, it's a major failure and a public trust failure."
Victoria Police is conducting a review into the faked tests to discover why the scandal occurred and how to prevent it from happening again.
The leading theory is officers were trying to make themselves look more productive amid what the police union called unrealistic workloads.
