Last month, a Milwaukee police SWAT team burst into Denise Berndsen’s apartment and turned the place upside down looking for evidence of child porn. The problem, says Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl, is that the man they were targeting had moved out five weeks earlier. They roughed up Berndsen, who had returned home from back surgery that day, her 74-year-old father, and a man she had just started dating and who for a few terrifying minutes wondered what he got himself into.
“They proceeded to destroy my apartment, still not saying why they were there,” said Berndsden, 43. “They not only told me the detective would explain all in time, they also had the nerve to tell me I should be lucky I’m not in handcuffs.” A police spokeswoman said: “Was it a mistake? Yeah. Was it an honest mistake? Absolutely.” Berndsen quoted officers as saying, “We’re sorry. I guess you’re just one more of his victims, ” meaning the child porn suspect. Said Stingl: “It would seem that with all their intelligence-gathering skills, [police] would know if the target had moved away more than a month earlier.”