was required to do this in the first place? And even more, how effing stupid do they have to be TO NOT FIX THE DAMN PROBLEM?
As often as three times a week, Rose and Walter Martin are greeted at their front door by cops brandishing guns. Far from criminal masterminds, the innocent 80-something couple are upstanding citizens who are the victims of a mistake in the NYPD’s computer system. Apparently when the department put in a new system in 2002, they entered the Martin’s Brooklyn address as the default address for warrants. Since then, their house number appears in warrants for rapists, murderers, and drug kingpins, all because of some bad lines of code.
So some idiots picked a real address, and no moron ever involved in this has bothered to fix it.
I realize it's New York, but still. SOMEONE there should have at least three working brain cells to rub together.
Update: in comments Sendarius points something out that hadn't hit me: ... the police officers involved are REPEATEDLY swearing false affidavits TO A JUDGE about the warrants in question.
If the address is wrong - and according to the story it has been wrong over 80 times - then what else that the police officer states in supporting affidavits is a lie?
3 comments:
I haven't seen anyone pick up the MUCH more significant point.
While the disruption to this couple's lives is egregious, the fact that it continues to happen means that the police officers involved are REPEATEDLY swearing false affidavits TO A JUDGE about the warrants in question.
If the address is wrong - and according to the story it has been wrong over 80 times - then what else that the police officer states in supporting affidavits is a lie?
If the address is wrong - and according to the story it has been wrong over 80 times - then what else that the police officer states in supporting affidavits is a lie?
Most of it, usually. Remember all your old grade school bullies? Cops now. Not every cop is an old bully, but all the old bullies are cops.
The idea that there has to be an address, and that "unknown" is not available (and the default!) suggests terrible design of the system.
That the default is a REAL address (that people live at!) is literally inexcusable.
The former, I could see being the result of a legacy system that NYPD can't afford to fix; the latter, well... even given the former, it'd be trivial to use an address that wasn't "real", or if it somehow actually checked, use Police Headquarters.
Savages.
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