An independent counsel will look into the actions of Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price on a night when Causeway police said he crashed through a toll booth barrier in a city vehicle and when pulled over admitted he had taken some drinks.

WWL-TV

Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price

The Mandeville city council decided to take the action to determine if Price broke city policy and to have the counsel decide if he should be punished, and if so what the punishment should be.

Causeway Police said the incident occurred April 22 shortly after midnight. Though Price admitted he had some drinks, Causeway Police did not give him a field sobriety test. He wasn’t issued a ticket until an administrative review some time later.

“I’m very, very sorry for it,” said Price. “It embarrassed me. It embarrassed my family. It embarrassed the city council and it embarrassed our community. I need to step back and really look at what happened and say this was a serious event for me. It was not smart. It was something I shouldn’t have done and, in retrospect, I can tell you that it will never happen again.”

The city’s current policy and procedures manual doesn’t specify what penalties might come from an incident such as Price’s, and the mayor himself isn’t sure of what he should face.

“I don’t know what the sanction is,” he said. “There is no means of sanctioning anybody iin the current manual.”

Metropolitan Crime Commission Chief Rafael Goyeneche said the city could simply look at what has been done to other city employees who have broken the same policies.