The police have released a picture of the toy gun that led to a man spending weeks in prison.

Last week’s Manx Independent reported that Mark Anthony Priestnal, of Marine Parade, Peel, had been jailed for 10 weeks for an offence of possessing an imitation firearm in a public place.

It sparked an outcry on social media, with many people suggesting that Deputy High Bailiff Jayne Hughes had been too harsh.

This week, in what appears to have been a response to the online criticism, the police posted an image of the toy gun and a real one on Facebook to show how similar they are.

But they later deleted the post.

The image shows the James Bond toy gun - actually an imitation Beretta 3032 Tomcat - compared with a Walther PPK handgun, the weapon of choice of 007 throughout Ian Fleming’s books and the film series.

In the post, the police said: ’In relation to a job that was publicised in the media last week about a gun that was seen on the lap of a male in a vehicle, the gun turned out to be an imitation. There was some talk about the gun being a toy gun.’

The police showed a picture of a real gun and the 'imitation’ and asked if residents could tell the difference and if they thought they could from a distance of 'several feet away’.

The post added: 'Officers often have a few seconds to make decisions with the following objections in mind - keeping the public safe, keeping themselves safe and keeping the offenders as safe as possible.

'This is why carrying imitation guns in public is treated as a serious offence.’

The court heard that Mr Priestnal, aged 61, was arrested on December 29. A special constable had spotted the toy gun in Mr Priestnal’s lap in his car and alerted an officer.

The arresting officer, PC David Schumacher, tweeted that the grip of the gun 'protruding from the driver’s waistline’ caught his eye.

PC Schumacher added that he had '#Taser drawn’ at Mr Preistnal. He also said that 'firearms will be treated as real until we can prove otherwise and with this, there was no way of knowing’.

In response to his tweet, Chief Constable Gary Robert replied 'Great stuff’.

When our coverage of the incident was posted on Isle of Man Newspapers’ Facebook page, many supported Mr Priestnal, noting that while the police have a job to do, his 'crime’ was not worthy of a custodial sentence.

But other comments included 'Disgusting! What a joke!’; 'Really? Jail time? That doesn’t seem fair at all’; 'This doesn’t make sense?? How can you get jail for a toy gun? It’s not even as though he was waving it around threatening people and pretending it was real’; and 'This is actually shocking’.

However, other residents agreed with Deputy High Bailiff Jayne Hughes’ comments that he had been ’foolish’.

While Priestnal was jailed for the offence, he had been on remand before he went to court for sentencing so he was released straightaway.