I feel for the kid. He was wronged. But Denver police have made it clear an apology from the officer isn’t forthcoming.

Is it really part of the price of good police work that a guy like Matt Bowes, minding his own business, gets ordered out of his car at gunpoint, is forced to his knees in front of his astonished co-workers and left handcuffed on the pavement for 20 minutes?

It happened about 1 p.m. Tuesday. Bowes, 24, was a half-mile from his job as a ramp worker at Denver International Airport when he noticed the first police cruiser.

It is a route he takes everyday to work, so he thought it strange when he saw the cruiser sitting there, where he had never seen one before. He kept driving.

When he turned at the light on Jackson Gap Street, another cruiser appeared. It followed him, and turned on its flashing lights when he got to his parking space.

“You’re about one second from getting four bullets in your (expletive) stomach,” an officer training his gun at the young man barked.

“Excuse my language,” Matt Bowes added, “but that’s what he said.

“I was kind of in shock. And I didn’t know what to do.”

He shouted that he worked at the airport over and over.

“Hands in the air!” an officer shouted, “or I’ll shoot!”

What is going on? Matt Bowes asked himself.

No, he had no weapons, he replied to the officers. No, he had no outstanding warrants or criminal record, he told them, adding he couldn’t work at the airline if he did.

Lying handcuffed on his belly, he watched them search his car.

“Quiet down. This kind of stuff happens all the time,” he hears an officer tell him.

He sees his co-workers standing in the distance watching, their mouths agape.

“I’m so embarrassed,” he said.

Twenty minutes later, an officer takes off the handcuffs and picks him up. They had received a tip on a suspect whose description and make of car matched his, an officer told him before handing him a card with a number to call if he had any questions.

“They were standing there shaking each other’s hands like nothing happened,” Matt Bowes said, adding that they again told him stuff like this happens all the time.

“And then they just disappeared.”

Detective John White, a Denver police spokesman, said officers often receive such tips and act on them in good faith.

“Yes, from time to time (what happened to Matt Bowes) does happen. Once we realize they are not the person we are looking for, we make every effort to promptly rectify the situation.”

Matt Bowes did call the number on the card. It was a number for the Internal Affairs Division. He told the officer there what happened, that he was too upset to even work that day. He wanted an apology, both verbal and written, from the officer who held him at gunpoint.

That is probably not going to happen, the officer told him, but he would, he said, offer him an apology on behalf of the Denver Police Department.

“I refused to accept it,” Matt Bowes said. “That guy didn’t do anything, so it was meaningless.”

Maybe the cost of keeping a city safe is, from time to time, frightening, humiliating and threatening to shoot an innocent man.

His next step? Matt Bowes didn’t know.

“I’m just trying right now not to let everything that happened affect me,” he said.

Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.