APD officer faces DWI charge after crash
Seven-year veteran’s patrol car hit curb
An Albuquerque Police Department officer has been arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated after crashing his patrol car into a curb late Wednesday night, according to court documents.
Joshua Malecki, 28, has been with the department for almost seven years and is a patrol officer in the Northeast Area Command, according to Celina Espinoza, an APD spokeswoman.
She said he was in his marked Dodge Charger when he hit the curb but was not on duty.
Espinoza said Malecki was put on paid administrative leave immediately — which means he will not be able to perform any law enforcement duties — until after an internal investigation.
She said if he is indicted on the charges, he will be fired.
“The department is committed to taking swift action in this case, but must follow policy and the rules set out in the union’s collective bargaining agreement,” Espinoza wrote in an email.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan
Court, Malecki was driving near Wyoming and Constitution NE around 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, when he struck a curb, damaging his two left tires.
He called a friend to pick him up and take him home, but then decided to call his supervisor to report the crash.
Malecki told the responding officers that his wife had gone to her mother’s house with their children and he was on his way there when he crashed into the median. He said he drank a cocktail of Seagram’s Seven Crown and 7UP before leaving the house.
According to the complaint, Malecki performed poorly on field sobriety tests and blew a breath sample above the legal limit. The complaint did not say what the results were. He was booked into the county jail and released on his own recognizance hours later, according to online jail records.
Police Chief Gorden Eden said he was troubled by the incident. He said an internal investigation is being conducted into the specifics of what happened and whether Malecki had been involved in other crashes.
“As a department, we work diligently to identify, arrest and convict people for DWI, and we’ve done a very good job of that,” Eden said. “It’s very concerning for me to have one of our officers arrested for DWI.”