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”.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      2 days ago

      Well the Joker clearly stabbed that guy with a wooden dagger about 1cm wide with a novelty eraser on the end

    • rhythmisaprancer@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      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.