Complaining of harassment, the father of Jordan and Justin Manderson said yesterday that Thursday’s police raid at his West Bay home was a terrifying ordeal, and that officers have refused any information about his sons.

“When the police officers came here, it was 5:30 in the morning. I was asleep in my front room and I was lying down when they came with a warrant signed on 20 January,” Jake Manderson said yesterday.

In a carefully orchestrated early-Thursday operation at 27 Cinder Lane, RCIPS officers executed a search and arrest warrant, signed on 20 January by Justice of the Peace Louis Ebanks, naming Jordan Manderson, 18, on  “reasonable suspicion” of conspiracy to murder and possession of an unlicenced firearm in connection with last year’s 13 September shooting death of Robert Bush.

In addition to detaining Manderson, police later said they had also arrested a 17-year-old male on similar suspicions, and “in addition to the two other arrests, a man was arrested for threatening violence”. Officers have declined to name any of the detainees.

Jake Manderson yesterday identified the 17-year-old as “my cousin, David Powery”, and said officers had also taken Jordan’s 19-year old brother Justin Manderson at the same time.

Jordan Manderson was acquitted on 21 June last year of the March 2010 shooting death in West Bay of numbers-runner Marcos Duran. Justin Manderson was cleared just five week ago for the June 2010 attempted murder and wounding of West Bay’s Andy Barnes.

In September 2011, attackers killed Bush as he sat in his car at the junction of Birch Tree Hill Road and Captains Joe and Osbert Road, along with a female companion.

The multiple shooting triggered a nine-day wave of four further tit-for-tat killings and one serious wounding involving West Bay’s rival Birch Tree Hill and Logwoods Dons gangs. At the height of the terror, a group of nearly 20 British police, headed by Merseyside’s chief gang-warfare officer Jon Murphy arrived to boost local efforts.

“So yesterday, people were shouting ‘get up, get up,’ and when I sat up I saw lights shining in my window and I didn’t see any officers. I didn’t know any were there,” Mr Manderson said. “I saw one person with black clothes and a handgun and a mask on, so I hit the floor.”

Authorising police to search the Cinder Lane house, the warrant named “firearm [sic], clothing, electronic devices, any other items associated with this offence” as “essential to the enquiry into the said offence”, going on to list “any document/device” and “any vehicle in the control of Jordan Manderson “ as subject to seizure.

Police said they had searched six homes, seizing a quantity of ammunition, but saying nothing about firearms or other items.

Mr Manderson cited both Jordan’s and Justin’s recent acquittals, “and I thought this was some kind of retaliation. I saw a guy standing about 15 feet from my house and all I did was hit the floor.

“They took both my boys, and now the police are just harassing them. It’s terrible,” he said. “I have called the police now and they won’t tell me anything.”

Police yesterday declined to comment on the timing of the Thursday raid, saying only that “the decision when to execute a warrant is an operational matter so we won’t make any comment.”

The mask, a spokeswomen said, was “a balaclava used for operational reasons”, usually intended to conceal individual identities, but declined further comment. She rejected accusations of harassment, however, saying “the RCIPS will continue to aggressively arrest and fight crime in these islands as and when appropriate.

“However, if anyone wishes to complain about any actions of the police, we encourage them to contact our professional standards unit.”