Computer Glitch blamed By Police for Over 50 Searches of Brooklyn couple's Home
Well, New York Police Department is not to be blamed for all the harassment that an elderly Brooklyn couple had to face. Rather it is a computer glitch.
This is the reason given by cops why they harassed an elderly, law-abiding couple by searching their house for more than 50 times in search of bad guys.
Actually the cops were testing a department-wide computer system in 2002 as they made Walter and Rose Martin’s house in Brooklyn as their test centre. However, in the coming years the cops came looking for murderers, robbers and rapists at the Martins sometimes thrice a week as the computer system failed and misled the cops.
You can well imagine the couple's plight as detectives from NYPD or the Identity Theft Squad used to raid the couple’s house every now and then. And, though, Rose Martin who is aged 82 had complained to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly but the puzzle remained unsolved.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne was aghast when he found out the reason that it was due to a computer Test way back in 2002, in fact he was astounded why such an old couple’s address was used to test something new.
Though, after receiving complains from the Martins in 2007, the police also tried to remove the address from their computers but still the raids continued. And the recent raids did leave Walter Martin’s blood pressure rising.
Investigators did find that most of them were deleted but not every file of the Martin’s was removed from the Computer system.
"It wasn't supposed to stay in the system," Browne said. "It's been removed."
Browne added that to remain even more cautious the cops have totally removed the Martin's address. Now, no officer can raid the home without checking the actual address. However, Rose Martin has become so cynical that she does not expect this problem to be solved in one day.
"It seems like too simple a correction for something that has been going on for eight years," she said.
These problems originate back to 1997 when the Martins bought the house. What’s even more disturbing is that the previous owners were also troubled by police and fire crews.
Such raids actually disturbed the previous owners so much that they fled the city. The cops had raided the house when the previous owners used to live at least 30 times since 1994.
