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Gardener 'given no choice' over trowel arrest caution (www.bbc.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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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".

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[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'm an American living in England. UK laws can be draconian as written, but it's only in rare cases that they're actually applied that way. The police have more discretion, likewise judges, and generally they can't be arsed to apply the full force of the law. So on paper, the UK might seem a totalitarian hellhole, but in practice, the US is immeasurably worse. And that's even when you consider absurdities like this incident, where the cops clearly overreached. Unlike the US, they also don't send people to prison for decades for shoplifting food.

Here's a stat to help you: killings of UK people by the police: under 10 cases annually. In 2024, leaving out car accidents, there were 3. Most of those were armed robbers or terrorists in the midst of murdering people or directly threatening to do so.

In the US, the equivalent number is estimated to be around 1300. The feds don't force states to report these statistics, so the best numbers we have come from journalists and non-profits, and are likely underestimates. Even after correcting for the difference in population sizes, it's obvious that the US has a major problem, and that's even before all the abuses and impunity introduced by Trump.

And one last set of figures to consider: in the county where I live, the homicide rate last year was 0.75 per 100,000. In the county I moved from in the US, the equivalent number is 8.6.