ALBANY — A veteran city police officer ticketed five years ago for crashing into parked cars and fleeing the scene was arrested Sunday for allegedly slamming his SUV into a row of parked cars in Pine Hills.

Officer Max Etienne, who has been on the force since 2003, was charged early Sunday morning with driving while intoxicated after he refused to take a Breathalyzer test when his colleagues arrived at the scene of the 5:03 a.m. crash, said Officer Steve Smith, a police spokesman.

Etienne, 42, struck the parked cars near South Main Avenue and Bancker Street, Smith said.

The caller who reported the crash told police that Etienne may have tried to leave the scene. Smith said that Etienne was found near the scene, his SUV battered with front-end damage from the crash.

No one was injured in the wreck.

Etienne has been suspended without pay and will be arraigned Tuesday in Albany City Court. In addition to the DWI charge, Etienne was also ticketed for making an unsafe lane change and refusing to take the breath test.

Smith said Etienne could face more charges as police are still investigating the crash.

Both Albany Police Chief Steve Krokoff and officials from the Albany Police Officers Union did not return calls seeking comment.

In December 2008, Etienne crashed his SUV into three cars on Colatosti Place and then drove away. No one was injured in that incident, which resulted in Etienne being ticketed for failing to keep right and leaving the scene of a property damage incident. Whether any internal disciplinary action was taken against Etienne for the 2008 crash was unclear.

Etienne was also the subject of an internal investigation four months before the 2008 crash when he alledgedly dropped his department-issued handgun outside a bar during LarkFest. In that incident, Etienne allegedly lost his semiautomatic police pistol on a sidewalk in front of Justin's near the corner of Lark Street and Madison Avenue and walked away. The gun was found by a civilian who called police.

At the time of the incident with the lost gun, a person familiar with the investigation told the Times Union that the department was focusing on whether Etienne was drunk when he dropped his firearm.

Whether Etienne was disciplined by the department for that incident was also unclear.

Etienne's future with the department will hinge on the internal investigation into Sunday's crash and how the DWI charge is resolved.

Since taking over for former chief James Tuffey in 2010, Krokoff has dealt with two well-documented cases where men on his force were accused of driving drunk.

In March 2011, then department spokesman James Miller was charged with DWI after a colleague stopped him in downtown Albany for driving with his headlights off. Miller pleaded guilty to driving while ability impaired, was suspended for a month and then worked for nearly a year before retiring in April 2012.

A December 2010 arrest involving an officer who was allegedly found passed out behind the wheel on Interstate 787 proved to be more complicated. Police ultimately fired the officer, Brian Lutz, on the grounds that his driver's license had been revoked, but, in November, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court unanimously agreed that Lutz should not have been fired. That ruling means Lutz could challenge his termination, though his future with the department is unclear.

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