THE dramatic picture captures the moment a police armed response team cornered a man carrying a child’s plastic sword in the street.

The police unit was sent in at noon on Sunday after calls from worried members of the public saying a man was carrying a samurai sword in High Street and Church Green in Witney.

He was later released without charge.

West Oxfordshire’s police commander Ch Insp Colin Paine said: “The information we were given is that a man was in a public place in possession of what was believed to be a sword, acting in an erratic manner.

“Thankfully, this transpired not to be the case and no one was harmed.

“We do not have the benefit of hindsight and can only base our response on the information we have at the time.”

Officers arrived within two minutes, before officers armed with rubber bullet-firing baton launchers turned up to force the man to surrender the toy on the Cogges estate.

Eyewitness Claire Kingston, who was in holiday in Witney from Essex, said: “We saw an armoured police car drive up.

“Police told him to walk forwards and that if he tried to do anything they would shoot him.

“They told him to get down on his knees and then they took him.”