A Rochester police officer apparently drove drunk with his 3-year-old son late Thanksgiving evening, sparking a police search that drew in some 75 officers, the State Police helicopter and kept the entire RPD Fourth Platoon late on overtime.
The incident, which took place at 149 Sherri Ann Lane in Greece, may include efforts by a deputy chief of the Greece Police Department to cover the incident up.
Police were called to a party at the Sherri Ann Lane address at approximately 2:30 a.m. Friday with the report of a missing child. Greece police responded and were told that a little boy was missing. One of several children at the party, officers were told he had not been seen since midnight – some two and a half hours before.
Greece police called for assistance from the New York State Police, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and the Rochester Police Department, to help conduct a search.
Officers found the people at the party to be belligerent and antagonistic toward them, refusing to cooperate with search efforts and shouting profanities at the officers.
The father of the missing child – Rochester police Investigator Jeff McEntee – was allowed by Greece officers to leave the scene in his private vehicle, ostensibly to search for the boy. McEntee, who is assigned to the Special Investigations Section, was thought by some to be extremely intoxicated.
By the time McEntee returned, some 30 of his fellow Rochester Police Department officers had responded to help in the search. These were officers whose shifts ended at 3 a.m. Ordered to the search by the overnight commander, some of the officers have put in for overtime and some – figuring they were helping a fellow cop – have not.
Thermal imaging equipment was brought in by the Rochester Fire Department and the RPD SWAT team. Efforts to use a police dog were unsuccessful because people at the party had swarmed the area and disturbed any scent trail at the scene.
As the search continued, officers recovered the surveillance video from a neighboring home.
On the video, there was visible the image of a man leading a child from the home at 149 Sherri Ann Lane.
At that point, officers feared they were dealing with a crime.
Investigator McEntee, the father of the missing child, said he did not recognize the man on the video. Neither did anyone else.
Investigator McEntee’s mother – alerted to the fact her grandson was missing – had responded to the scene to wait with family. Investigator McEntee ask her, “Could that be me?” She responded, “It could be.”
At that point, a senior Rochester officer asked the Greece and trooper sergeants leading the incident if they had had the McEntee home searched.
They had not.
Rochester police officers immediately went to the home of Investigator Jeff McEntee and found the little boy asleep safely in his bed – all alone in the house.
Investigator McEntee had apparently driven the boy home and put him to bed, but had been so drunk that he didn’t remember it. That fact, on top of the rude treatment given police by McEntee and others at the party, and the embarrassment at this misconduct of one of their own felt by Rochester officers, left about 75 angry cops.
At that point, Greece police Deputy Chief Casey Voelkl arrived.
As the incident then wound down, officers felt that Voelkl was going to sweep the incident under the rug.
In fact, McEntee – who probably drove drunk twice, once with a child in the car – was not charged with anything. And when Voelkl talked to Spectrum News about the incident, he said that the matter arose from a “miscommunication.”
That is not true.
A seemingly intoxicated Rochester police investigator drove his little boy home, left him there unattended, drove back to a party, blacked the whole thing out, drove yet again, and then refused to cooperate with officers searching for his son.
And with a deputy chief in attendance, the Greece Police Department did not charge him with anything.
And you only know that now because that dishonorable conduct pissed so many other cops off.