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”.
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.
He was very clearly gardening.
The problem here wasn’t that the police were called. The problem is that they gave him a caution for not breaking the law when it was a clear misunderstanding.
Where did you hear about his clothes?