"I said, 'Mate, I've got three kids.' " Queanbeyan Local Court has heard that the sacking may not have been an unfortunate coincidence. The court was told that, a few days after what has come to be known as "the dinosaur incident", one and possibly two of the police officers involved visited Mr Caton's workplace and spoke to his boss. Less than a week after that, Mr Caton's role as a removalist was terminated, along with that of a friend who was also involved, Adam Antram. "You've deliberately gone to see the boss of these two young men in their workplace to undermine their employment?" Mr Caton's barrister, Steven Boland, asserted to Senior Constable Patrick Hicks during his client's hearing on charges of resisting arrest and assaulting police.

"No," Constable Hicks replied. The constable told the court that he had gone to the men's workplace because he needed to serve Mr Antram with a court attendance notice, having been unable to find him at home. He said he could not remember to whom he spoke but said he had not revealed that Mr Caton and Mr Antram had been charged with assaulting police and resisting arrest. In sworn statements and testimony before the court, Constable Hicks and his colleague, Senior Constable Todd Finnegan, said that, after Mr Caton and his mates had been pulled over on suspicion of involvement in a violent home invasion, the 31-year-old had been "rummaging around his pockets … possibly for a weapon". This was why he was pulled from the car, forced to the ground and handcuffed, they said.

The constables also said Mr Antram had charged Constable Finnegan, necessitating a "check drill", which resulted in him being shoved into a retaining wall. But their own colleague, Constable Lucie Litchfield, said that Mr Antram had not threatened anyone and expressed the view that constables Hicks and Finnegan had "corroborated" each other's stories. The police prosecutor withdrew all charges in the middle of Constable Litchfield's evidence, and lawyers for Mr Caton and Mr Antram are now applying for the NSW Police to pay their substantial legal costs. In written submissions to the court, Mr Boland said the NSW Police knew that their case contained not only contradictory evidence, but evidence of serious criminal activity by two police officers. "The NSW Police failed to appreciate that the more serious allegations of criminality pertained to the officers in charge of the investigation rather than the people who were being prosecuted," Mr Boland said.

"The misjudgment displayed by the continuing prosecution of this matter, all the while knowing that there was a major internal allegation of corruption that went to the heart of the proceedings, is regrettable in the extreme." A NSW Police spokesman said the matter was the subject of an internal police investigation.