Off-duty officer arrested for alleged DUI, hitting parked cars
An off-duty Philadelphia police officer was arrested for driving under the influence Saturday night after his vehicle struck at least one parked car in the city's Fox Chase section, police said.
An off-duty Philadelphia police officer was arrested for driving under the influence Saturday night after his vehicle struck at least one parked car in the city's Fox Chase section, police said.
Ryan Laskowski, 27, who is assigned to the Second District in Mayfair, has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of his case, police said.
A neighborhood resident who witnessed the arrest said that shortly before 10 p.m., Laskowski struck three parked cars on Solly Avenue and then turned onto Halstead Street. There, the front passenger-side wheel of Laskowski's truck became bent, forcing him to stop, said the resident, who asked not to be identified.
"He would have kept going if that didn't happen," the resident said. "There was a ton of kids out playing. It was a bad area to be doing that."
In a news release, police said Laskowski's 2012 Dodge Ram 1500 hit a parked car on the 600 block of Solly and then left the scene, turning onto the 8100 block of Halstead, where it became inoperable because of a broken axle.
The resident said that within 15 minutes, at least seven squad cars and several police supervisors arrived.
"I saw them take him out of his vehicle" and into a police vehicle, the resident said. "He was definitely intoxicated. He was bad."
The driver didn't resist arrest, but "seemed like he just accepted it," the resident said.
A sergeant confirmed for the crowd that had gathered that the driver was an off-duty police officer, the resident said, and Internal Affairs Unit investigators responded.
"They were very concerned," he said of the police response. "I thought they were very professional."
No phone number could be found for Laskowski, and no attorney was listed for him in court records Tuesday.
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