Wisconsin Cop Regularly Smoked Crack While on Duty

A Platteville police officer who allegedly smoked crack cocaine while on duty was charged in federal court Tuesday with keeping a drug house.

Michelle V. Salentine, 28, who has been with the department since 2004, appeared in U.S. District Court and was ordered held in jail until a detention hearing, to be set at a later date.

Salentine remained in the Dane County Jail Tuesday night. Platteville Police Chief Doug McKinley declined to comment on the case.

According to a complaint and affidavit filed in federal court, Salentine was arrested on Monday after she arrived for a night patrol shift. She admitted to authorities, the affidavit states, that she had been smoking crack four to six times a week for about a year, and that she and another person who lives with her occasionally drove to Milwaukee to buy crack.

According to the affidavit, a confidential informant who has a drug-related criminal history told the FBI on Feb. 8 that Salentine regularly smokes crack at her home on Hathaway Street in Platteville and at another address in Platteville, including occasions when she was in uniform as a Platteville police officer.

In a text message to a law enforcement officer on March 2, the informant wrote that Salentine "came by around 12 a.m. in her squad, took her gun off, left it on the bed and sat in the kitchen," the affidavit states.

Two days later, an officer received another text message from the informant about 1:35 a.m. saying that Salentine was smoking crack there and in her squad car and was getting ready to go back on duty. The informant, wearing a recording device, was also with Salentine at the officer's home while she smoked crack on April 14, according to the affidavit.

FBI agents executed a search warrant at Salentine's home on Monday, where they found marijuana and crack cocaine paraphernalia.

Another person who was interviewed during the investigation told the FBI that she sold crack cocaine to Salentine about 20 times since October and saw Salentine smoke it many times before going on duty. She said she has also seen Salentine use powder cocaine and smoke marijuana, the affidavit states.

German man steals electricity with meat hook

German police are investigating a man for theft after he siphoned electricity off a high-voltage overhead transmission line for one month with the help of an ordinary meat hook.

The 36-year old man from Sibbesse in Lower Saxony concocted the plan to steal electricity after the power company cut him off for failure to pay his bills, police said. The man attached a cable to the meat hook and tossed it onto an overhead power line. He then drew power from the transmission line to his home, located about 150 metres away.

"I've never seen anything like this in my 34-year-career," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Lach, chief executive of regional utility Ueberlandwerke Leinetal GmbH, said. "It's incredibly dangerous and utterly stupid."

An employee of the utility noticed the meathook during a routine check. Lach said the man was lucky he is still alive and warned copycats not to try it: "It will kill you," he said.

Woman identifies her photo, says 'charming' serial killer persuaded her to pose for him

Judy Cole then and now, who thinks she is the subject of photo #169 of photos taken by serial killer Rodney Alcala and released by NYPD.

Two women have come forward to share what they say were chilling encounters with a serial killer after cops released a trove of photos he may have taken in New York.

The women told the NYPD they met now-notorious sicko Rodney Alcala decades ago when he lived in the city and asked them to pose for him.

"He was very charming. I should have known better," said Judy Cole, who told cops she thinks she is the subject of photo No. 169.

Cole, a writer who lives in North Carolina, told cops she remembered meeting Alcala on the upper West Side in 1978 when she was 19 and agreed to pose on the roof of a building.

A California woman also told the NYPD she thinks she is among those in the 215 New York-linked photos of unidentified women and children snapped by Alcala throughout the 1970s, police said.

The trove of photos was released Tuesday after the Daily News revealed cops had been sitting on the stash for a month.

Cops got eight tips in all.

Alcala - a photographer who studied film under Roman Polanski and has a genius-level IQ - is on California's Death Row for killing four women and a 12-year-old girl.

The 66-year-old Alcala is also a suspect in the deaths of two 23-year-old Manhattan women found dead in the 1970s: TWA stewardess Cornelia Michel Crilley and young college grad Ellen Hover.

Investigators believe he lured his beautiful prey by asking them to take suggestive pictures - and then tortured and murdered the women.

Cops found more than 1,000 pictures in Alcala's storage locker while investigating him in the death of the 12-year-old girl. Those that appear to have a link to New York were sent to the NYPD.

Investigators believe there could be more unknown victims among the photographs.

Manhattan wine critic Alice Feiring did not see herself in the newly released portraits, but she told cops she had a close call with the killer when she was just 13.

Feiring said Alcala persuaded her to go to his East Village apartment in 1968 and then locked her inside. She said she managed to escape.

"I just thought he was a pervert," Feiring said.

(215 more of Alcala's photos here)
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/galleries/nypd_seeks_clues_from_photos_taken_by_serial_killer_rodney_alcala/nypd_seeks_clues_from_photos_taken_by_serial_killer_rodney_alcala.html

haunting proof that chimps really DO grieve

United in what appears to be deep and profound grief, a phalanx of more than a dozen chimpanzees stood in silence watching from behind the wire of their enclosure as the body of one of their own was wheeled past.
This extraordinary scene took place recently at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon, West Africa.
When a chimp called Dorothy, who was in her late 40s, died of heart failure, her fellow apes seemed to be stricken by sorrow.

As they wrapped their arms around each other in a gesture of solidarity, Dorothy's female keeper gently settled her into the wheelbarrow which carried her to her final resting place - not before giving this much-loved inhabitant of the centre a final affectionate stroke on the forehead.

JOKE: Swearing Off Women

These two guys had just gotten divorced and they swore they would never have anything to do with women again.

They were best friends and they decided to move up to Alaska as far north as they could go and never look at a woman again.

They got up there and went into a trader's store and told him, "Give us enough supplies to last two men for one year." The trader got the gear together and on top of each one's supplies he laid a board with a hole in it with fur around the hole.

The guys asked "What's that board for?"

The trader said, "Well, where you're going there are no women and you might need this."

They said, "No way! We've sworn off women for life!"
The trader said, "Well. take the boards with you, and if you don't use them I'll refund your money next year.
"Okay," they said and left.

The next year this guy came into the trader's store and said "Give me enough supplies to last one man for one year." The trader said "Weren't you in here last year with a partner?"

"Yeah" said the guy.

"Where is he?" asked the trader.

"I shot him" said the guy.

"Why?"

"I caught him in bed with my board!"