HIS only option, according to the ex-president of the Nomads bikie gang, was to torch a police car parked outside his Newtown tattoo shop because he feared a shoot-out with assassins.
Scott Orrock, 47, pictured, the owner of Skin Deep Tattoo, is in the District Court facing charges that at 3am on April 21 he smashed a police car window and poured highly flammable alcohol into the vehicle before setting it alight.
Ten minutes earlier Mr Orrock had gone into Newtown police station demanding ''f------ move it [the vehicle] right away or otherwise I will burn it down''.
On Tuesday Justice Robyn Tupman directed the jury to acquit Mr Orrock of intimidating a female constable at Newtown station, because there was ''no evidence'' to support it.
Mr Orrock admits he set the vehicle ablaze but has pleaded not guilty, claiming in the witness box it was necessary for him to do it because the police truck's presence was a threat to his and his family's lives.
''The truck outside was not good for me. It was obvious people thought I was an informant and that's really dangerous.'' he said.
''I could have gone and got a gun and wait for them and have the big shoot out but I've walked away from that. I just didn't want to do that. I could have rung people to get some help. Get some boys around,'' he told the court.
A group of tow truck operators drinking at the Sandringham Hotel refused to help him move the police vehicle and his final option was to ask police to remove the car, he said.
''I am not the sort of person to go to the police for help. I felt isolated because I couldn't get help from police. I thought there would be serious harm to me, or death,'' he said.
Mr Orrock said on the night of the fire he was in ''a state of panic and anxiety'' after becoming fixated on the police car that had been parked outside his shop for several days.
But when police refused to move it he said he was ''scared and had fear''.
Police placed the vehicle outside his tattoo parlour as a deterrent during a tit-for-tat turf war between the Nomads and rival Hells Angels bikie gang.
Mr Orrock did not know if the threats were from the Nomad club that he left for family reasons in 2009, the Hells Angels to which he belonged for two weeks in March last year and of which he was a prospective member, a criminal he had once tattooed, or someone who thought he was a police informant.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
