Barney Fife could do better pre-op intel than that. Heck! Floyd the barber could do better than that.
Something could be spelled out better here. If police traced back to a return address put on a piece of mail by the person they intended to find, what tells them the person isn’t holed up there with the tenant? Unless due diligence, of course, finds multiple pointers to the person at some different address, and I would fault police for not exercising that kind of due diligence if such records were within the detectives’ scope. It’s for a reason they’re called detectives. They’re supposed to detect things, not go wild.
Seems to me a Magistrate has to authorize a search warrant. What did they tell that joker regarding the rationale to support an arrest. Clearly because the last name of the property records is the same as they guy we are looking for is not enough IMO.
Magistrates used to take these matters seriously from my experience in the 70’s and 80’s. What the hell changed all that?