'I'll shoot you,' motel guest told by police

By EUGENE BINGHAM

Clean-cut Michael Billett had just finished his 18-hour day when the rifle was thrust in his face.

"I'll shoot you," the man warned.

Mr Billet froze, not about to ignore any demands: his captor was a policeman.

"I couldn't believe what was happening," says the North Shore engineer.

Mr Billett was an innocent member of the public caught up in an armed police raid.

Although the incident happened three years ago, he is still shocked by how the police dealt with him, even after they realised they had the wrong man.

Mr Billett, who regularly travels around the country for his job maintaining sterilising equipment, was in Wellington doing some work at a private hospital in May 1999.

He had just returned to his motel unit and sat down with a beer to unwind at the end of a long day when he heard the screech of tyres.

Worried about his station wagon stacked with equipment, he pulled open the curtains to see what was going on outside.

A black-uniformed member of the police armed offenders squad yelled at him to come outside with his hands up.

Still holding his beer, he slowly walked outside before being barked at to put the bottle down.

"I put it down on the bark garden and when I looked up, I saw a guy with a rifle pointed at my face," said Mr Billett.

"The end of the rifle was an arm's length from me. The guy holding the rifle said, 'I'll shoot you.' "

Confused about what was going on, Mr Billet was led along a pathway and forced to lie face down. His hands were cable-tied behind his back and he was told he was under arrest.

Eventually, a detective came over and spoke to Mr Billett. "It was not until then I was asked for my name."

It turned out the police had come to the motel looking for several armed robbers who had been hiding in the unit next to Mr Billett's. The police had missed their prey and caught the wrong man.

One of the detectives used a knife to cut one of Mr Billett's hands free - he was left to cut the tie off his second hand himself.

"All I wanted was for someone to sit down with me and tell me what was going on. Instead, the AOS all took off like something from television."

Mr Billett got what he says was a half-hearted apology from an officer who rang the next morning, but it was several months before he got a formal apology after he had complained to the Police Complaints Authority.

The authority's investigation sais Mr Billett had been through a harrowing experience, but concluded that the police had been dealing with a dangerous situation.

"Clearly your being confronted by an armed police officer issuing instructions to you late at night ... was a harrowing experience for you," said the authority's letter to Mr Billett.

"It would have been preferable, once the immediacy of the incident had receded, for someone to have explained to you at length exactly what had been happening and to have ensured that you were in full possession of the facts."

But the authority said that police dealing with dangerous situations were required to act in the interests of public safety and had to be firm in their issuing of instructions. "I believe that is what occurred in this instance," said the letter.

Mr Billett remains dissatisfied with the police handling of the events.

He believes they could have done a better job at finding out who was in which motel unit.

"Two officers could have walked in to see the motelier, sat him down in the corner and gone through the guest list," said Mr Billett, who was a regular guest at the motel and well known to the owner.

In the days afterwards, Mr Billett was a wreck - he could not leave the house for three weeks. And years later, his confidence in the police is still shattered.