Oops. The man they were targeting had moved out five weeks earlier.

Instead 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," she said. "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."

Officers rummaged through her bedroom closet, dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets, and in doing so, broke a couple of wizard figurines and cracked the headboard mirror on Berndsen's bed, she said.

They brought high-tech equipment into the apartment and hooked it up to her laptop computer to search for evidence. If they were looking for porn, Berndsen said, she found it odd that they never touched a bookcase full of DVDs and videocassette tapes in the living room.

Once they realized their mistake, the police showed Berndsen and her guests a photo and told them the name of the man they were seeking. She said she recognized the name from some mail that had arrived at her place.

....

"They said, 'We're sorry. I guess you're just one more of his victims,' " meaning the child porn suspect, Berndsen said. "I said, no, we're your victims."

You like to think the cops are chasing after people who exploit children. But it would seem that with all their intelligence-gathering skills, they would know if the target had moved away more than a month earlier.

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.

The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas from flatulent cattle and sheep.

[...snip...]

It also coincides with recent calls from climate change experts for people in rich countries to reduce red meat and switch to chicken and fish because land-clearing and burping and farting cattle and sheep were damaging the environment.

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane.