RPD Investigator Jeff McEntee suspended in Greece missing child incident

A Rochester police investigator has been suspended with pay following an incident that occurred while he was off-duty.

A missing child investigation early Friday in Greece sparked an internal investigation over whether Jeffrey P. McEntee drunkenly took his 3-year-old home from a holiday party and then forgot he'd done so.

Chief Michael Ciminelli said Monday that the RPD's Professional Standards Section would seek to determine whether McEntee broke any laws or violated regulations regarding off-duty conduct.

McEntee, 35, is an 11-year veteran of the Rochester police force. He is assigned to the Special Investigations Section, which is responsible for the suppression of illegal narcotics trafficking and other vice-related activity.

Around 2 a.m. Friday morning, Greece Police were notified a 3-year-old child, the son of McEntee, was missing from a home on Sherri Ann Lane, where an apparent holiday party was going on. The child's mother and father were both in attendance.

That sparked a massive law enforcement response, with officers from Greece, Rochester and New York State Police, as well as from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, participating in the search.

Greece Police Chief Patrick Phelan said responding officers were not initially aware the missing child was the son of a law enforcement officer. Calling the early scene "chaotic," Phelan said most of the adults at the party were highly intoxicated and uncooperative.

"There were a lot of people running around the yard and the house looking for the child," he said. "We made repeated requests for them to not do that because they were contaminating the scene, but most of the people we encountered were not cooperative with our requests."

He said there were at least 10 children and a half-dozen adults at the scene.

Police first searched the Sherri Ann Lane home looking for the child, then set up a perimeter outside and began a yard-to-yard search. Additional resources were called in from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office and a State Police helicopter was summoned, although it was estimated it would take about two hours for a pilot to respond.

In the meantime, Phelan said, a neighbor volunteered video from security cameras that captured a portion of the Sherri Ann Lane property. On that, police saw the child walking down the driveway sometime around 1:30 a.m. with an adult man who investigators eventually determined was McEntee.

"The video just showed them walking down the driveway and nothing further," he said. "It didn't show them getting into a car."

Officers then searched McEntee's home, about four miles away from Sherri Ann Lane, where they found the boy asleep in bed, home alone.

Phelan said Child Protective Services has been notified. He also said the entire matter is being reviewed by his department and the Monroe County District Attorney's Office.

He also said police are reviewing footage from traffic cameras and other video sources along the route between the party and McEntee's house.

Evidence of a crime?

Some local lawyers question whether there is a double standard at work, and whether anyone else facing similar accusations would have been asked to submit to tests for blood alcohol content.

While those tests could be legally challenged later, the police still often make an initial effort to determine whether a suspect is intoxicated or impaired, local defense lawyer Mark Foti said.

“If there is some suspicion of intoxication, one of the first steps at that point would be to confirm intoxication or potential impairment by alcohol or another substance,” Foti said.

“It doesn’t appear that took place,” he said.

Former prosecutor Sarah Wesley, who is now a defense lawyer, said that if the child was left alone at home, the parents could be subjected to a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

With the endangerment charge, the child doesn’t “actually have to have been harmed in any way,” she said. “It’s just the potential is there.”

“I would be flabbergasted if any other person had been in that same set of circumstances but wasn’t charged,” she said.

But Phelan said it still comes down to probable cause.

"On Friday, we didn't know who took the child home and we still don't know," he said. "So, who left the child alone? The person who took them home, right? Who is that? We don't know and the only people who know aren't talking to us."

He said although McEntee appeared to be intoxicated at the Sherri Ann Lane party, police did not conduct any blood alcohol testing because they had no proof he had driven a car.

"As we sit here right now, we don't know how the child got home," said Phelan on Monday. He said investigators have asked McEntee what happened and whether he drove his son home. "He was asked that night, he said he was not sure and since then he has refused any further interviews. He has retained an attorney and he is refusing to speak to us."

More: Greece, Rochester police investigating missing-child incident

"If we develop additional information that leads to an arrest, we will make an arrest," said Phelan, calling allegations that the department was trying to cover up possible drunken driving by McEntee "ridiculous."

He also bristled at other media reports that officers at the scene turned a blind eye as McEntee drove around the neighborhood looking for his son. Phelan said while McEntee was in and out of the house during the search, at no time did any of his officers see McEntee get behind the wheel of a car. If any other law enforcement officers saw such a thing, "we want to hear from them," said Phelan.

"To insinuate that we didn't arrest this guy because he was a police officer is just ridiculous," said Phelan, estimating that over the course of his career he's arrested at least six officers for various crimes. "I'd arrest (McEntee) and sleep like a baby tonight. We simply didn't have probable cause for an arrest on Friday. We just didn't and you can say whatever you want but you gotta have probable cause to make an arrest."

Phelan would not rule out an arrest in the future. "It's possible that one's coming. We're reviewing every fact in the case."

More: Greece, Rochester police investigating missing-child incident

Internal investigation

McEntee was not charged with any crimes by the Greece Police Department on the day of the incident.

But Ciminelli said that his department launched an internal investigation within a few hours.

"We have rules and regulations and policies that govern both on-duty and to some degree off-duty conduct by Rochester Police officers," Ciminelli said. "We will do an investigation to try to determine as completely as we can what occurred. If there's a basis for disciplinary action we'll make that decision at that time."

Investigators with the Professional Standards Section have already begun gathering documentary evidence to determine whether there was any misconduct.

"The police department can't control every aspect of an officer's off-duty life, but there are certain rules and regulations because of their status as an officer," Ciminellii said. "One of them is that an officer is required to obey all laws."

Whether or not there is a criminal charge, Ciminelli said his department has an obligation to explore whether its officers violated any laws.

"We have other rules governing off-duty conduct," Ciminelli said, "one of which is not to act in a manner that will bring disrepute to the Rochester Police Department. So that's another thing we would look at."

Ciminelli said he did not believe that other members of the Rochester Police Department were in attendance at the holiday party where the incident took place, but that was something the internal investigation would explore.

The length of these investigations can vary depending on how many people need to be interviewed, but Ciminelli said they typically take several months.

Mike Mazzeo, the president of the Rochester Police Locust Club union, said the union has yet to get involved.

"It's off-duty-related," he said.

However, Mazzeo said, the union could become involved on McEntee's behalf with the internal investigation.

Massive response

Chief Ciminelii said that the first call to report a missing child was received about 2:06 a.m., and the first RPD officer responded to assist with the search at 2:47 a.m.

At least 37 officers responded to that call, more than a third of the total who were on duty in the city at the time. They were on the scene for about an hour before the child was found at 3:43 a.m.

Ciminelli said that no off-duty officers were called in to assist, although some of those who responded worked beyond the normal end of their shift. It's too soon to know how much overtime RPD officers expended on the incident.

"At this point. we won't be able to calculate the cost until the overtime slips are submitted and entered into our payroll system," Ciminelli said.

During that time, there were nine calls for service in the city of Rochester, and Ciminelli said they were able to handle that volume without needing to request mutual aid.

Ciminelli said the size of the response, which included multiple agencies and upward of 75 officers, was not unusual.

"For a child that young to be missing late at night," Ciminelli said, "it would be typical that the lead agency would have as many officers as possible to conduct a search on foot over a localized area."

However, Phelan said he wasn't so sure. "Rochester Police deployed multiple officers not necessarily at our request," he said. "So I don't know that you would have gotten that kind of response for the average missing child."

Calling in the state police and Monroe County Sheriff's Office would be standard procedure, he said, but as far as Rochester police, "We certainly didn't ask for the entire fourth platoon to come and assist."

Three Monroe County sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene around 2 a.m. to aid in the search. Three other deputies reported to Greece to cover other calls for service, according to Cpl. John Helfer, the office’s spokesman.

SLAHMAN@Gannett.com

MCDERMOT@Gannett.com

GCRAIG@Gannett.com

Includes reporting by staff writers Tina Yee and Will Cleveland.

Timeline of events

A summary of events that occurred during the investigation into the report of a child missing from a Greece home on Nov. 24. All times are approximate.

2:06 a.m. — First call to report child missing from 149 Sherri Ann Lane.

2:47 a.m. — First RPD officer responded to assist with search.

3:10 a.m. — Phone alert made to neighborhood residents about missing child.

3:30 a.m. — Police view surveillance video that shows child leaving with an unknown adult around 1:30 a.m.

3:43 a.m. — Child located at McEntee family home, four miles from Sherri Ann Lane.

4:15 a.m. — Second phone alert made to notify residents the child had been found.