Intoxicated Off-Duty Cop Crashed Car and Assaulted Witness, Police Say

An off-duty officer with the New York Police Department (NYPD) was drunk when he crashed his car and punched a witness before attempting to flee the scene, police said Tuesday.

Tanvir Ahmed, a 28-year-old police officer who has been with the department for two years, was arrested Monday roughly half a mile away from where the incident occurred, according to WPIX. Even after being apprehended by police, he allegedly would not take a breathalyzer test. Ahmed faces multiple charges, including “assault, driving while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident and refusal to take a breath test,” the New York Post reported.

Video footage posted to Twitter on Tuesday by New York City Alerts appears to show the incident unfold. The video’s narrator follows a vehicle with an NYPD placard on its dashboard, which then crashes into another car. After being approached by a witness, the driver of the car attempts to flee the scene, but is eventually caught.

BREAKING VIDEO: NYPD officer driving while Intoxicated crashed into a vehicle and assaulted a person on the street while trying to flee from the scene. pic.twitter.com/1rASG4D68M

— New York City Alerts (@NYCityAlerts) July 3, 2018

“Wow you’re a fucking cop?” the video’s narrator asks incredulously when he sees the NYPD placard. “Holy shit he’s a 67 [Precinct] cop!”

According to the New York Daily News, Ahmed was the third NYPD cop to be arrested within 24 hours. Another officer, traffic agent Jean Denard, allegedly slapped and choked his wife, while fellow traffic agent Dawn Gordon has been accused of buying drugs.

Police officers who commit offenses like these should be held accountable for their actions, but that doesn’t always happen, especially within the NYPD. In fact, internal discipline records obtained by BuzzFeed News, the contents of which were revealed to the public in March, revealed that least 319 NYPD officers remained on active duty despite being found responsible for termination-worthy misconduct.

According to those records, 38 of those officers were found guilty of excessive force, fighting, or unnecessarily firing service weapons remain on duty. Another 71 officers were found guilty of wrongfully dismissing charges as a favor (so-called “ticket fixing.”), 57 were found guilty of driving under the influence, and at least two were found guilty of sexual misdeeds.