NYPD Says Sorry With Cheesecake

A computer glitch is responsible for sending police to an elderly Brooklyn couple’s home more than 50 times in the last eight years.

New York’s finest have shown up at Walter and Rose Martin’s door looking for murderers, robbers and rapists as many as three times a week since 2002. All they “got” was the World War II veteran with high blood pressure and his increasingly worried wife.

The real culprit: a computerized identity snafu.

The problem came from a citywide computer test that used the Martins’ address as a simulation, according to an Associated Press report. The simulation was used to test an automated computer system that tracks crime complaints and other police information. That morphed into the Martins’ home being the home address for a range of suspects over the years.

And somehow, police attempts to purge the address from the New York City Police Department’s computerized records never entirely worked.

“It wasn’t supposed to stay in (the system),” said NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne. “It’s been removed.”

The case underlines how widely personal information — right or wrong, used appropriately or not — can spread through computers, e-mail and on the Internet.

On March 18, detectives from the NYPD’s Identity Theft Squad showed up again at the Martins’ house — this time to personally apologize for repeated mix-ups.

And the next day, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly showed up to do the same thing — with a New York cheesecake in hand.

Maybe more importantly, the couple's address is now flagged in the system as an extra precaution, requiring police to double-check before visiting the home.