By Christine Harvey
The News Orleans Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans Police officer has been suspended from duty after being booked with DWI following a May 1 collision with a Causeway Police car on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
Officer Roy Caballero, 28, was driving north on the bridge about five miles from the Metairie shoreline around 3 a.m. when his pickup swerved from the right lane into the left lane and into the Causeway cruiser’s path, said State Trooper Joseph Piglia. State Police Troop B is handling the investigation into the accident.
Causeway Police Officer Blake Kirby, who was chasing a speeder in the left lane, tried to brake to avoid hitting Caballero’s personal vehicle, a white 2003 Dodge truck, said Causeway Police Chief Felix Loicano. He was unable to stop in time, and Kirby’s car sideswiped Caballero’s truck, which then hit the bridge railing, Piglia said. Caballero, a two-year member of the department who works in the 3rd District, was off-duty and not in uniform when the accident occurred, he said.
Kirby’s supervisor called State Police to investigate because Caballero was clearly impaired, Loicano said. Troopers arrested Caballero after he failed a field sobriety test and took him to Troop B in Kenner, where he declined to take a breathalyzer test, Piglia said.
In addition to the DWI charge, Caballero was cited for improper lane use, Piglia said. Caballero did not identify himself as a New Orleans Police officer until he arrived at Troop B, whereupon the department’s command staff was notified about the arrest, he said.
The New Orleans Police Department is conducting an internal investigation into the accident, said Bob Young, NOPD spokesman. Caballero is suspended without pay pending the investigation’s outcome and Superintendent Warren Riley’s review of the incident, he said.
Though the Causeway Police Department typically requests an outside agency investigate when another law enforcement agency is involved in an accident on the bridge, such treatment has not always been the case.
In October, a Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy slammed his patrol car into the back of a Causeway officer’s vehicle while both were driving across the Causeway. No outside agency was called, and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office was allowed to conduct its own investigation, the results of which are unknown.
Loicano said he wanted to avoid the kind of backlash that occurred when people learned the Causeway didn’t call in the State Police to investigate and made it clear to his officers that an outside agency is to be called as a routine. Like the October incident, neither agency involved publicized the accident involving Caballero.
Copyright 2008 The New Orleans Times-Picayune