"For operational reasons we are unable to add any further detail about the individual sought, but police will continue to make inquiries," Inspector Kura said.
Havelock North resident Matt O'Brien was at Longlands Rd yesterday to pick up his 1 year-old daughter when the AOS arrived and ordered them to leave the property.
"They came flying through the gate with all their guns blazing and then came looking around and surrounded the place with their guns pointing out of the bushes," he said.
Mr O'Brien said he and his daughter's mother Jordan Hetterley, who lives on the property, got four children who were at the house at the time out on to the main road quickly.
"They were trying to make us stand out there but because there were people taking photos I wanted to go into the orchard where it wasn't so public. Because it's more humiliating as well, you know. We are a self employed business so there's people that live around us. It's all unreal, really," Ms Hetterley said.
Ms Hetterley said the pair were quick to think of an explanation for the children involved; telling them that the operation was just a police drill.
"We had to say to them [children] that it was like a drill. Like an earthquake you have earthquake drills. It's just a drill that police do every now and then sort of thing, you know, making something up to make it not as it really is," she said.
Mr O'Brien said along with "traumatising" the children, the public nature of the incident reflected badly on the self-employed orchard business on the property.
"It was sabotaging self employment because the people who live there have an orchard business. Customers came and turned up, clients turned up to get their quotas, their fruit for the week. It's appalling," he said.
Both said they had never heard of the person police were looking for.
"Never heard of him. We don't even know, that's why when they were saying they were looking for this person I was just stumped. He wasn't here, no one was here but they still demanded us to get out," Ms Hetterley said.
She said when they were allowed back into the property their entire house and possessions had been searched.
"We're doing cleaning up now. They flipped all the beds. It's traumatic for the kids to walk out of their home like that but to walk back into it as well. That's unfair," she said.
She said the police's approach was "way over the top" and thought a single officer approaching the house to speak to her would have been more appropriate.
"No children should ever witness anything like that regardless of anything," she said.
Inspector Kura said AOS deployments are "cognisant" of the sensitivities surrounding any children or other vulnerable people when they enter an address.
"Their focus is on the safety of the entire community," she said.