A man working on his house truck caused an Armed Offenders Squad callout in Dunedin this morning, after neighbours thought the backfiring vehicle was gunshots.
Police in the Dunedin suburb of Concord responding to reports of gunshots, which turned out to have been a vehicle backfiring. Photo: RNZ / Tim Brown
The incident caused emergency services, including police with a dog handler, to swarm to Dunedin suburb of Concord just after 10am on Tuesday.
Police put up cordons near Mulford Street as they responded to reports of the gunfire.
A man, who did not want to be named, said he was working on his house truck which had backfired.
"I was working on the truck and it backfired, and armed offenders showed up and searched the house over a couple of backfires. Last week they searched my house over finding a plastic gun in the ... skip, so I don't know what they're going find next week. I don't know what excuse they're going to use to come here either."
The home is owned and managed by Kāinga Ora.
He conceded he had a history with police though "I'm not a big fish, put it that way", he said.
"We're being evicted by Housing New Zealand. They don't want the truck here, so we've been getting it going. Today's the deadline it's got to be out so we've been trying to get it going and it backfired a couple of times. The neighbours could all see we're working on it but the police turned up anyway and searched the house.
"There were car loads of them. They were on the roof of the neighbour's house."
Police had been involved in the eviction process, he said.
"They searched the house and found a couple of joints - that was about it. Lucky enough they didn't charge me for it and they're going to destroy it, which is nice of them I suppose."
He felt "slightly" targeted by police after last week a similar search was carried out after a plastic imitation firearm magazine, featuring stickers, sparked the response.
"It was just pathetic. They went straight for it like they knew it was there and searched my house."
He was unsure why police had been so heavy-handed in recent weeks and did not believe his eviction from the home was the cause.
"It's pretty crazy. This guy up on the scaffold was yelling out at me 'Come out on the road and put your hands up' and I thought, is that the painter yelling out to me? No, it was a police officer up on the roof. They come from all the backyards and surrounded us.
"We told them we were only working on the truck and they could see we had the jumper leads hooked up. I told them it was a couple of backfires, but they still had to search the house."
He estimated about eight armed officers showed up and searched the address.
A police spokesperson said officers responded to a report of shots allegedly heard in the Mulford Street area about 10.15am.
There were no reports of injuries and the armed offenders squad attended as a precaution with cordons set up on the street.
Motorists were asked to avoid the area and a police officer waved approaching vehicles away.
The police have now left the scene.