The New York Police Department has apologized to an elderly couple for targeting their home at least 50 times since 2002. Police say that it was due to computer glitch when the address of Walter and Rose Martin’s Brooklyn home was used in a test of the department’s computer system.
The police would come to their home roughly three times a week.
Walter and Rose Martin’s Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002. It is astonishing that they never sued for the negligence — which the police promised to stop only after the media published the story.
Rose Martin, 82, and Walter Martin, 83, experienced stress related problems due to the continual inquiries.
While the police insist it is due to a computer test in 2002, reporters have found evidence that the problems go back to 1997 for the prior owners — who reportedly sold the house out of frustration with the constant harassment by police. It is bizarre that no one in the police department ever took steps to rectify the problem.
For the full story, click here.
My computer science instructor in high school was a wise man. I have used his prime lesson many many times over the years.
“To err is human. To really screw something up you need a computer.”
You would think that someone would have figured this out sooner, but what do I know.
Have no liquids in your hand at the 1.34 mark,”PROFFESIONALISM”?
It’s too bad they couldn’t just hire somebody to correct the problem, some sort of specialist in those dang computing machines. That would probably cost WAY more than the man hours wasted, and potential law suits that were caused by the glitch.
I would ask how much money that they wanted and then work from there. This is crazy.
Buddha,
I am not as old as some but younger than others. Did you say Computers in High School? Wow the biggest thing we had going was the TI Gold Plated LED Watch. I think that we had advanced past the abacus stage but not much. The slide rule was still big and the triangulated ruler was another one. That one was good to used as a weapon or shoot rubber bands and to knock the mud off of your boots. How to use that one I am not sure today. Its that Long Term Memory loss. Oh yeah, I think I might remember now….
While I do not like to encourage lawsuits, I would like to see these octogenarians live out their lives in luxury, courtesy of the NYPD Blue.
AY,
The first computer I ever worked on was in G&T class. It was a TRS-80 Model I with a cassette tape player as the storage device. The first program I ever wrote was a text game based on the movie Westworld. It had 4K memory. And we were “badasses” when we got an upgrade to 16K. lol
The instructor I reference with that quote, Mr. G, basically pushed giving us the option of a CS class through the school board on raw determination. He was a hardcore hobbyist, but his primary teaching role was teaching Physics and Chemistry. He got the school to cough up cash for a couple of Apple II’s and an Apple IIe and it was off to the races! It was on these machines I had my first crush on a programming language, Turbo Pascal, and had my first major annoyance at a programming language, Apple BASIC.
From there I moved to a Honeywell branded 8088 machine I bought through a relative who worked for Honeywell selling mini- and mainframes. She was tight with their local tech crew and those guys gave me my hardcore skill sets and taught me COBOL. (A shout out to Karl U. wherever you are!) Those guys were awesome.
Since then I’ve had a variety of machines, both Apple and Intel based PC clones. Although I don’t code much anymore (I’ll do it if I have to instead of just for fun as it is time intensive), I’m getting back into it more since I switched to Linux a few years ago for all my “serious” stuff. I keep a Windows partition on my home machine for playing games, but my laptops all use some form of Linux as their primary OS.
Yep.
I’m a geek.
eniobob,
That video makes me wonder if I am sane enough to understand basic everyday words. Surely, no professional cops can be that wrong–I must be confused and must have misunderstood what I saw and heard.
The NYPD needs to dig down deep in their pockets and pay this couple a very large sum. Invading their home 50 times and many times when someone else owned it isn’t an error. It is arrogance and should be criminal.
Abusing elderly citizens is much like abusing children. The police should be held accountable on both criminal and civil levels. Stupidity is no excuse …
Blouise,
Your comment reminded me of the aged proverb, “once a man twice a child”
I think you can only call the FIRST time a “mistake”…and I don’t think they’ll print what I call the other 49 times…
The bad thing about this is that ALL cops across the country will suffer from these inexcusable actions.
I mean FIFTY times!?!?? I think its time to get the “Clown Cop” suits out and have the boys wearing them until they can get their act together. (Can hardly wait to see twenty of them get out of that little car!!) LoL
Of course they are already wearing those clown suits in the minds of many people anyway….
Former Federal Leo:
I felt the same way.
“Wow the biggest thing we had going was the TI Gold Plated LED Watch”
Don’t forget the Gestetner, AY. Did you ever get to crank out copies on that?
I heard that the couple had a visit from some upper echelon guy who sealed the deal with an apology and — now this is hard to believe — a cheesecake! If this was in one of the articles, forgive the redundancy.
A cheesecake???