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Brooklyn cops raid elderly couple's home 50 times looking for crooks, and never find anything
by Tim Minton and Jennifer Millman, NBC News Friday, March 19, 2010
Our comment:
The explanation makes sense — the Martins' address was used in testing a computer system but never erased, so it sounds like their address would pop up whenever a real address wasn't properly input.
What isn't understandable, can't be defended, and ought to get somebody fired is the unfathomable attitude of not giving a damn — that's the only way to explain all the years of not doing anything about dozens of repeated wrong-address raids.
The Daily News is dead wrong in treating this as an amusing story, leading with "Blame it on a computer" (see below). That's ludicrous, and misses the point entirely.
Blame it on a police department that doesn't care about making more than fifty wrong address raids at the same address. A police department that tolerates that, year after year, raid after raid, and only fixes the problem when a newspaper account proves embarrassing, is a police department they will tolerate any violation of any ordinary citizen's constitutional rights.
Helen & Harry Highwater, proprietors Unknown News
Computer snafu is behind at least 50 'raids' on Brooklyn couple's home
by Kate Nocera and John Lauinger, New York Daily News
Friday, March 19, 2010
Blame it on a computer.
Embarrassed cops on Thursday cited a "computer glitch" as the reason police targeted the home of an elderly, law-abiding couple more than 50 times in futile hunts for bad guys.
Apparently, the address of Walter and Rose Martin's Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002.
What followed was years of cops appearing at the Martins' door looking for murderers, robbers and rapists — as often as three times a week.
After the Daily News exclusively reported on the couple's plague of police raids yesterday, apologetic detectives from the NYPD's Identity Theft Squad showed up at their home.
Rose Martin, 82, said they told her Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered them to solve the puzzle — stat.
By the end of the day, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said the snafu was traced to a 2002 computer test, though he couldn't explain why the couple's address was used as a test case in the first place.
He said that when the Martins complained to cops in 2007 about their scary series of official doorknocks, police tried to wipe their address from the system.
But the raids continued. The most recent, on Tuesday, left 83-year-old World War II vet Walter Martin woozy from soaring blood pressure.
Investigators found yesterday that not every computer file bearing the Martin's address was deleted.
"It wasn't supposed to stay in [the system]," Browne said. "It's been removed."
In order to be "doubly cautious" in the future, Browne said cops have flagged the Martin's address so no officer will be dispatched to the home without double-checking the address.
A skeptical Rose Martin asked the department to write her an official letter, dubious that such a long-standing problem could be fixed in a day.
"It seems like too simple a correction for something that has been going on for eight years," she said.
Meanwhile, The News learned problems with the house go back to before the Martins bought it in 1997: The previous owner sold the modest Marine Park house because police and fire crews kept showing up at his door chasing bogus reports.
In his case, the freaked-out former owner — who fled the city because of what happened at the house - told The News he was being targeted by a still-unknown tormentor who sicced the cops on him 30 times in the three years starting in 1994.
"Someone was calling from different pay phones in the area, calling in fires, domestic disputes, kids screaming — whatever," said the man, who is still so scared he asked his name not be printed. "All totally unfounded."
The ex-owner said he complained multiple times starting in 1994, and his brother, a city firefighter, helped to get fire marshals to investigate.
The calls, which the marshals believed might have been made by a devious vengeful neighbor, stopped about six months before he sold to the Martins, he said.
"I always thought I was being targeted personally — and, to be honest with you, it freaks me out that it's happening again," the ex-owner said.
An elderly Brooklyn couple claims they're not criminals, but the NYPD sure makes it look that way.
Cops have raided the Marine Park home of Walter Martin and his wife, Rose, at least 50 times since 2002 looking for crooks, but each time — after a chorus of door pounding and calls of "Open up!" — they've found they got the wrong address, according to a report.
Police arrive from all over — from Staten Island precincts to the Bronx — and bang on the door of the Martins' two-story home searching for a different suspect — from alleged murderers to robbers to rogue cops — nearly every time, reports the Daily News.
"I'm really worried," Rose Martin, 82, told the paper. "How could so many people get my address and how could cops be coming from so many different precincts?"
Even police don't understand why the couple's home continues to be a target.
"We're looking to see if suspects were using the address as part of an identity theft scam, or if there's a glitch in our computer system," NYPD chief spokesman Paul Browne told NBC New York. "The police shouldn't be repeatedly going to their door."
Browne says the NYPD "thought the situation was addressed two years ago" after Walter and Rose Martin wrote a letter to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly complaining about the problem.
Now Browne says "a note was placed in the computer yesterday" that should fix it.
The most recent misdirected search came Tuesday morning, when cops' banging awakened Walter Martin. Bleary from the sudden jolt from sleep, the 83-year-old World War II veteran felt his heart tense and got dizzy as he dressed.
"You're not the first," Walter Martin told the News he said to the shocked cops when he answered the door. "We've had police here 50 to 75 times looking for people … After they left, I felt funny."
Walter Martin says the officers are generally respectful once they learn of the mishap, but that the all too frequent impositions make his blood pressure soar.
Meanwhile, his wife fears for the health of both of them.
"I am fearful that if a no-knock warrant is issued with my address that my husband or I will end up having a heart attack," Rose Martin wrote in the letter to Kelly.
Police sources told the News that a criminal database search of the Martins' address turned out more than four dozen papers, including documented 911 calls, complaints and other police forms. A News computer search of the address found the names of 15 other people living at the residence, none of whom the Martins say they know.
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