The mayor and former police chief of a northern New York town was arrested on drug charges after an undercover drug operation, authorities said.

Timmy Currier, the mayor of Massena, threw a gram of crack cocaine out of his car window before his arrest Tuesday, the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

The sheriff’s office said Currier kept driving when deputies first tried to pull his car over at about 12:30 p.m. Currier, who is 55, drove for about a third of a mile before throwing the drugs out of his car and stopping, the authorities said.

Currier was arrested on charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance, tampering with physical evidence and failure to comply with a police officer. He was arraigned virtually and will appear in court at a later date.

A woman who answered the phone at the Currier home on Wednesday declined to comment.

Currier served as the police chief in Massena, near the Canadian border, for more than two decades. He was elected mayor as a Democrat in 2014 and was reelected in 2018.