Computer snafu is behind at least 50 'raids' on Brooklyn couple's home

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. The most recent, on Tuesday, left 83-year-old World War II vet Walter Martin woozy from soaring blood pressure. 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...read more