Gardener 'given no choice' over trowel arrest caution
Gardener 'given no choice' over trowel arrest caution
Gardener 'given no choice' over trowel arrest caution
He said the officers were shouting at him to "drop the knife".
"I said I didn't have a knife and they told me to drop the knife again," he said.
"So I dropped my Japanese hand gardening sickle and a handful of privet that I just cut off the hedge.
"They turned me around, pushed me up against my house, handcuffed me, then put me in the back of a van."
Mr Rowe was carrying a Japanese-made trowel in its sheath, a small Japanese gardener's sickle and a peeling knife, along with a trug of vegetables.
He said the peeling knife was his late grandmother's, the sickle had been purchased a decade ago and the trowel, which has a short blade and wooden handle, was a present.
He added that he had not been aware of any warnings about carrying the tools in public.
However, since his arrest, a warning has appeared on the trowel manufacturer's website.
It said customers needed "to familiarise themselves with offensive weapons law before carrying the tool in public".
Good to see the police openly lying... He didn't have a large dagger on him. It was a trowel.
I mean, to be fair... Those Japanese trowels do look like a big fuck off knife:
Yeah, it's fair enough that they were called and showed up.
Their conduct after realising it's not a knife though is what's wrong. They know now, for a fact, that it is not a dagger and yet in their public statement they say it is, and they coerced a caution out of an innocent person.
Exactly, that's absolutely a knife. A huge one.
It may also be used as a trowel, but looks at it, that looks like something crocodile dundee would throw at someone.
A guy walking around in public with that strapped to his belt in a tactical looking holster is just asking for trouble. He was probably looking forward to the day the cops got him for it. He can't have been so stupid to have that on and think "this is totally fine, nobody would ever be concerned by this".
Trowels can be used like a dagger though.
So clearly they are daggers!
Also, so can pencils. Good luck writing that up in your book now, Sergeant Smedley.
Well the Joker clearly stabbed that guy with a wooden dagger about 1cm wide with a novelty eraser on the end
I had a teacher in high school who had been stabbed with a pencil. They would wear a shirt with a hole in it from what they said was the incident, but they did a lot to keep us on our toes so maybe it was from a trowel.
..... Have they ever done anything else?
This is the UK police, they don't quite have the reputation the US ones do.
I'd have expected better from them.
I mean, it's GMP. Second only to the MET in everything you don't want to hear about a police force doing.
Did you see that "trowel"?
It looks like a big hunting knife. I garden, I have an allotment and grow all sorts for years, I've never seen a trowel that looks anything like that before.
Sure, maybe it's some specialised sharp knife-like trowel from Asia that nobody here has seen before, but that is exactly why it's reasonable to assume it's a knife, first and foremost.
I also heard the guy was dressed like he was cosplaying being in the army (in camo), but that may not be the case. It would make one further suspicious of him though, if it is true.
A guy walking around with a big sharp "trowel" in (to joe public) a green tactical looking holster thingy, wearing army camo? Yeah, that doesn't sound like a bloke going down the allotment to tend to the cabbages.
Obviously it was a misunderstanding in the end, but at the same time, I can 100% understand why the fuzz would make some safe assumptions to disarm someone of their potentially deadly weapon.
The bloke can't have been stupid either, he was carrying the very weapon like thing visibly in public, and when the bobbies asked him to drop it he acted like he had no clue what they were on about? Come on.
I could understand buying and using a trowel that's weird like that, if that's what you're into, but it's common sense that it looks like a weapon and should obviously be concealed as to not worry joe public. Especially if you're planning to go around wearing army clothes or whatever, but even so.
https://feddit.uk/comment/19011437
See my response in this thread, it addresses your concerns.
2 comments above mine has pictures.
Trowels like that are becoming increasingly popular, just because you've not seen one before doesn't mean they're not legitimate.
Where did you hear about his clothes?