MANDEVILLE, La. -- A Ponchatoula bar owner is releasing video of an incident that led to the investigation of a Mandeville Police Officer accused of possibly drinking and driving in her police car.
Officer Becky White is on paid administrative leave while the department looks into the situation.
Slow business Monday night led Sophia Niehaus to close up Sophie's Porch Bar in Ponchatoula around 11 p.m.
Just before midnight, a sound startled Niehaus and a friend helping her close. It was a young woman trying to come into the locked bar. When she finally walked away, one of the women looked out the bar's windows.
"She said, 'She's in a cop car,'" Niehaus recalled, "And I said 'What?' I walked to the front of the bar and we were looking out the window and there was a black and white Mandeville Police car sitting in our parking lot."
That's when Niehaus said she knew something was wrong.
"We kind of got panicked at first because I thought it was a stolen police car because she did not look like a police officer at all," said Niehaus, "She was in a cute little outfit, hair down."
Niehaus said the woman, who we now know was Mandeville Police Officer Becky White, off-duty and out of uniform, was stumbling and getting back into the driver's seat, so she called 911.
With both women recording on their cell phones, multiple officers from Ponchatoula Police, then the sheriff's office and then a private vehicle showed.
"They never handcuffed her, never obviously gave her a field sobriety test like you see on TV," said Niehaus. "And gave her a very quick pat down. We were wondering who she was because a normal citizen, who was stumbling around in the parking lot back to a police car in plain clothes, was not being arrested."
After a while, the video shows a man talking to White while she sits in the passenger seat of a Ponchatoula Police SUV. He moves out of the way to allow her to get out, but she falls and is seen being helped into the passenger seat of her unit. Mandeville Police Assistant Chief Ron Ruple is then seen getting into the driver's seat of the unit and drives off.
"I don't think it was very proper at all," said Niehaus.
Ponchatoula Police Chief Bry Layrisson said his department had no proof of a crime and handled the situation as they normally would in that instance. Mandeville Police declined to comment citing the on-going internal investigation into this incident.
We did some digging into White's past and found she was arrested for a first offense DWI in Orleans Parish in 2006. Back then, she was 24-year-old Becky Kramer. For that, she paid an $1,100 fine.
Prior to joining Mandeville Police, she was an officer with the New Orleans Police Department from 2008 until 2013. Her civil service record shows she resigned for a better job.