You have to feel sorry for a certain pair of pensioners in Brooklyn, America, since their home has been raided by the police some 50 times in the last eight years.

The pair are not international drugs dealers, they don't run a pyramid scheme, and they are not selling bootleg stairmasters, they are simply the unfortunate victims of a computer error.

Unfortunately for Mr and Mrs Martin, the pensioners in question, their home address was used to test a police authority computer system, and never got removed. This means that sometimes as frequently as three times a week they had to deal with early morning door knocks from coppers looking for murderers, robbers and rapists.

Which can't have been much fun.

Thanks to the intervention of the local Daily News however, the couple have got their lives back, and unless they take part in a multibillion diamond sting, will no longer have to answer the door to SWAT teams and Brooklyn's finest.

Although the police have apparently taken the couple's address off the system, Mrs Martin - who is presumably fed up with computers already, has asked for written confirmation, in a letter, that it won't happen again.

Good luck with that.

19 Mar 2010