I would not take a lot of convincing that the whole "incident" was engineered to elicit a response very like the one that occurred, along with the subsequent publicity.
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He had it coming..
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And as soon as we see the footage from the policemans (well policepersons) camera I'll think about believing them.
Don't get me wrong I'm generally in favour of the UK police and they have my full and complete trust in almost 51% of cases.
Used to be much higher but a few high profile cases have exposed... issues.
I would recommend looking up Led By Donkeys on Youtube who did a piece about the Metropolitan Police, it wasn't a good advert for em.
The gardener bloke might not have done himself any favours but having trust in the police to do the right thing cuts both ways doesn't it?
He trusted them and they bent him over, but we're expected to trust them still? Fail.
I agree, I've personally seen far too much of the Met Police attitude and performance/issues to trust them a lot, or a few other forces. But still think in this case they did it right. I suspect the muppet was looking for headlines, and got them.
Don't know if there are any cases but you'll get picked up pretty quickly if you start waving it around in any public places (allotments apart) or it's not obvious why you are carrying it. e.g. wearing a floral shirt and carrying a used spade in town will raise eyebrows and suspicion. Alarms will go off if a builder walks into a bank carrying a shovel!
Riding home in working clothes with it tied to your crossbar probably won't.
Riding home in working clothes with it tied to your crossbar probably won't.
Gardener arrested by armed police while carrying tools home from allotment
Samuel, who lives in Chorlton, had his Japanese gardening trowel, a sickle and a fruit harvesting tool confiscated from him
They tried to contact his preferred solicitor three times, the solicitor wouldn’t answer, they offered him the chance to wait for another solicitor (or the duty solicitor) and he refused, instead opting for an interview without a solicitor present.
Walking along with a four foot shovel in your hand? Probably not.
Walking in the same place with a NATO e-tool in its carrier on a web belt? Maybe.
It's a nonsense, but it's the way British (especially England & Wales) law works, What's "reasonable" is what a majority wont find weird. And it really does come down to that.
I completely agree but I’m old enough to remember Thatchers striking miner-beating crew of thugs sent down to Wiltshire in 1985 to beat the crap out of the Peace Convoy, smashing their vehicles, dragging out mothers and babies screaming. I’m familiar with Led By Donkeys, but look up some of the Beanfield footage and you’ll be truly horrified at the violence and brutality of the police.
UK law on this is a bit silly, and arguably ineffective at preventing teenage boys stabbing each other with kitchen knives, but not displaying things that might scare people into calling the Police makes sense.
Where does it say preferred? I read the story as the police tried to contact the duty solicitor multiple times but after 12 hours the poor bloke got fed up and felt he had to accept the caution.
I often wonder about this as I would have thought most normal people don't have the details of their own defence solicitor with them?
Maybe, just maybe, it was all a setup to discredit the police? Maybe he expected to be be able to contact his solicitor. I think we should all try to look beyond the sensationalism and selected story published by the media.
Agricultural tools have been the weapons of peasants for millennia. Carrying potential weapons in view in public should be questioned. There is no justification for doing so. I am sure there is more to this story than the story teller is telling us.
The ‘contact this solicitor’ to me reads as though it was a specific one he’d asked for, as otherwise I’d expect them to say ‘duty solicitor’.
Even if we put that aside, from another article:
He had three options and he chose (was not forced to choose) the worst one.
I totally agree that the police should not have cautioned him for this if the story is true as told. This is not in the public interest and the police should be rebuked for it.
At the same time, this guy chose to give up his right to legal counsel, after doing something that was already stupid (walking with multiple blades, on military style webbing, on display through a busy town) and is now enjoying spreading his compo face all over the internet to try and reverse what are at least 50% consequences of his own stupidty.
The disingenuous ‘it is just a trowel!’ misrepresentation of what is clearly more like a knife than a normal trowel has really lost him credibility in my view.
I don't doubt there's more to the story but I don't see a deliberate attempt to be arrested by armed police in order to get a caution.
As for carrying tools it would depend on how far he was from his allotment. I've openly carried sharp spades, forks, shears and probably knives through a built up area to our allotments when I was a child, without any concern. I carry secateurs when I go down the road to trim our hedge but may have to rethink this these days. But then I would regard myself as a gardener more than anything else.
I don't think carrying secateurs round your house to cut your hedge back is equivalent. And without making assumptions as to your age but I doubt you were a child during these more recent years when knife crime has risen so markedly.
I wonder if when you were a child kids being stabbed hit the news quite as often as it does now? Not the same connate l climate of knee jerking politicians as there are these days.
I don't think we have things right wrt sharp implements in this country but what situation we are in is that you carry your sharps discretely in any urban or suburban and public areas. That is pretty much common sense in this climate.
The simple truth is this situation should never have happened. I bet some of you guys vary tools even more likely to get police interest than his at times. Have you ever been stopped? Why? Is it because you carried them in a bag or other discrete way? I think most people do that not just for not getting stopped but also because it's easier for other reasons too.
This guy got into this situation due to his own actions. He should own them and learn from them. Above all that he should move on and accept his caution as the consequences of his stupidity. Carrying sharp tools openly and then accepting a caution without legal representation. I have no sympathy for him at all.
I wonder if when you were a child kids being stabbed hit the news quite as often as it does now? Not the same connate l climate of knee jerking politicians as there are these days.
I don't think we have things right wrt sharp implements in this country but what situation we are in is that you carry your sharps discretely in any urban or suburban and public areas. That is pretty much common sense in this climate.
The simple truth is this situation should never have happened. I bet some of you guys vary tools even more likely to get police interest than his at times. Have you ever been stopped? Why? Is it because you carried them in a bag or other discrete way? I think most people do that not just for not getting stopped but also because it's easier for other reasons too.
This guy got into this situation due to his own actions. He should own them and learn from them. Above all that he should move on and accept his caution as the consequences of his stupidity. Carrying sharp tools openly and then accepting a caution without legal representation. I have no sympathy for him at all.
Another news story, slightly more info and some comments from solicitors.
metro.co.uk
'I was gardening when armed police arrested me - they thought I was an extremist
'I thought, if it's a knife crime, then that's a prison sentence - then I won't be getting out of this cell.'
metro.co.uk
“Actually it’s a sickle” as police officers order you to drop the big blade in your hand doesn’t seem smart. Or I suppose if being kind, could it be a neurodivergent thing of taking things literally? Though I feel the media would’ve played that fairly heavily if it were the case.
It says they didn’t present their weapons, but then he goes on to imply they did, or would have for someone else?
Also mentions a condition of his caution includes contact with a mental health professional of some kind, I wonder if this is standard practice or whether there’s something to this story we’re not hearing about.
It all just feels rather “sheltered hipster interacts with the real world and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t get special privileges”.
Of course none of this would’ve happened in the first place if our government and media organisations weren’t deliberately whipping up hysteria about sharp objects just because a few inner city gangsters can’t stop stabbing each other.
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I usually agree with most of what you say ..... but many of the deaths that have occurred on the streets have been carried out by psychopaths (my word, not necessarily accurate) on innocent members of the public (such as the case in Nottingham). I see nothing at all wrong with a law that says 'do not go around brandishing slicing, cutting, stabbing objects in public or you will be arrested'. I understand there needs to be 'intent' for an object to be classed as a weapon, but I would rather that was discussed before some innocent was killed.
I agree that people should not go around brandishing them, though I think in this instance from the story so far the police should’ve investigated (as they did) and then given some advice before releasing rather than going for the caution. Unfortunately the aforementioned climate we are in causes police and ministers to say things such as ‘zero tolerance’ and encourages them to get as many stats on their side as possible to say they’re fighting knife crime, which makes for a good sound bite but doesn’t allow sensible discretion.
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