NYC Elderly Couple's Home Targeted At Least 50 Times By NYPD In Botched Police Raids For Suspects

Brooklyn World War II vet Walter Martin and his wife, Rose, aren't at the top of the NYPD's most wanted list - it just feels that way.
Cops have swooped down on the law-abiding couple's modest Marine Park home at least 50 times in the last eight years hunting bad guys - only to learn they were chasing a bad address.


They've come looking for murder and robbery suspects. Once, cops came hunting for one of their own - an NYPD officer accused of raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter.


In each case, NYPD officers from commands ranging from the north Bronx to Staten Island somehow confused the Martins' two-story home with the hideout of a suspect or key witness - a different person nearly every time.


"I'm really worried," Rose Martin, 82, said. "How could so many people get my address and how could cops be coming from so many different precincts?"


The Martins' nightmare began in 2002 and has grown to ridiculous proportions.


The latest came at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the Martins were jolted awake by police fists pounding on the home's front and back doors.


The startling wakeup call strained 83-year-old Walter Martin's heart, and he felt dizzy as he dressed hurriedly.


"You're not the first," he told the amazed officers. "We've had police here 50 to 75 times looking for people. ... After they left, I felt funny."


He said he took his blood pressure - and it was soaring. "It finally went down to normal after about three hours," he said.


The Martins have documented the unending police pop-ins - and have amassed a sizable collection of cops' business cards.


The lifetime Brooklyn residents bought the home in 1997 to be closer to their children.


All was fine until early 2002, when junk mail, court documents and arrest warrants began arriving for a motley collection of strangers.


Then, the police began knocking on their door - again and again and again.


"Police! Open up!" became a familiar phrase to the Martins, who have had police at their door as many as three times in a week.


Most of the time, the officers quickly realized they had hit the wrong address - and left in frustration, saying little.


Other visits have been more memorable.


In June 2002, two female officers from the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau showed up looking for a woman who had accused a police officer of sexual misconduct.


The most bizarre mixup came on Oct. 10, 2006, when cops and FBI agents rolled up, hunting for then-cop Angel Negron, who was later charged with raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fired.


"That is one I can't get over," Walter Martin said, unable to understand how the NYPD could not know how to quickly find one of its own.


Frustrated and scared, the Martins wrote to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and U.S. Postmaster General John Potter - but officers are still pounding on their door more than three years later.


Police brass are baffled. "Our identity theft squad is investigating the matter," said Inspector Ed Mullen, an NYPD spokesman.


"If they're getting that many visits we have to find out why," a police source said.


The NYPD's 61st Precinct once called it a computer glitch. Postal officials suggested the couple get a post-office box.


After the Daily News began making inquiries, the couple's address was run through the NYPD's Real Time Crime Center. Police sources said databases spit out 49 pages of documents, including complaints, 911 calls and stop, question and frisk forms. A News computer search of the address lists 15 other people living there. The Martins know none of them.


Rose Martin said cops have always been respectful and never crashed in.


Still, as she wrote to Kelly, she worries something tragic could happen if the problem is not corrected.


"I am fearful that if a no-knock warrant is issued with my address that my husband or I will end up having a heart attack," she wrote.