A man cautioned for carrying a bladed trowel in public

hornetstinger said:
Ban all power tools. You never know a carpenter could stab with a chisel, cut peoples limbs off with saws, stab people with screwdrivers, hit people with hammers, brick layers could kill someone with bricks, or suffocate people with plastic cement bags. Accountants could stab people with pens, so those should be banned as well.

People that work at bed shops could suffocate people with pillows so pillows should be banned.
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Most of this is in a Lonely Island music video :cry:
 
BUDFORCE said:
Errrrrr.
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iu
 
ttaskmaster said:
He did - He was taking the tools home, having used them specifically and only for their intended purpose.
Gardener cautioned for carrying traditional style gardening implements.


Why does it matter who sees them, so long as you're not behaving like a **** with them? Would you be cowering in fear if you saw within my hoary grasp a Stanley No 5 bladed article?

I'm also not aware of any law that requires you to conceal your (potentially offensive) bladed article. That's just advice from a few retail and hobby websites.
basc.org.uk

Carrying knives

Explaining the legalities of carrying a knife for use in the field, including explanation of the law around lock-knives.
basc.org.uk basc.org.uk
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It's not a law to keep your knives covered up, it's about defending your good reason excuse which IS law.

You have your knives on show with no immediate legal reason, that's enough for the police to nick you. It is exactly as simple as that, nothing on show, they have nothing to go on. Also nothing for concerned public to phone you in about which is how it starts.

Now, after being nicked, polish up your good reason excuse.

Then a court decides if wanting to show off your trowel that's identical to a large dagger, in this sweet scabbard, the entire way home, was essential for the gardening work.
 
This case raises some concerns.

Is it suddenly a legal problem for me to wear my twin gardening katanas (that I dual wield in the supermarket veg aisle when testing fruit for ripeness) in public?
 
Rroff said:
At first seemed like a considerable mishandling by the police but when it eventually gets to the details the gardener was considerably misguided in their transport of the tools - if you are going to be moving equipment like that too and from site it would be very advisable to put them in a suitable bag rather than wear a bladed item (which resembles a dagger) on the hip in an accessible fashion.
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Exactly my thoughts on it too - when the article mentioned pointed/bladed trowel, I assumed something like this:

DmFUqOs.png


But the actual "trowel" as shown in post #9 is clearly a knife, regardless of what the manufacturer has decided to call it.

Obviously we don't whether it was naivety, wanting to look "cool", or just forgetting it was there that caused him to be wearing it on display, but I'm fairly confident that if instead it was in a tool bag/backpack/etc. with a bunch of other gardening tools, muddy gloves etc. he wouldn't have had an issue.
 
I used to get airsoft RIFs (back when anyone could buy them) shipped to my work rather than have them sat on the porch of my empty house and carry them home (boxed) in an old Yamaha keyboard bag until I found myself standing on the Central Line next to some musical type who wanted know what model it was and have a look at it…

Bin bags, parcel tape and old nylon strap got used from then onwards and nobody ever gave them a second look.
 
Hotwired said:
You have your knives on show with no immediate legal reason, that's enough for the police to nick you. It is exactly as simple as that, nothing on show, they have nothing to go on. Also nothing for concerned public to phone you in about which is how it starts.
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So you can walk around with one of these in your hand, just like the bloke did:

Scythe Tool | Garden Scythes | Sickle Tool | Hand Scythe | Sickle

Light weight multi purpose Japanese hand sickle for cutting grasses and end of season herbaceous stems. Blade: sharp, curved in carbon steel 165mm.
www.japeto.co.uk www.japeto.co.uk

But it's the small knife securely sheathed on your tool belt that Police have a problem with?
 
I'm not sure if it's just me but this reads so funny:

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.
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I feel awkward enough walking through London underground with an aluminium snooker cue case. I get looks like I'm going to suddenly pull a shotgun out Arnie style from that terminator 2 scene concealed in a flowers box.
 
jaybee said:
I feel awkward enough walking through London underground with an aluminium snooker cue case. I get looks like I'm going to suddenly pull a shotgun out Arnie style from that terminator 2 scene concealed in a flowers box.
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How is that your problem, though?
Presumably if you were a violinist, you'd be too terrified to leave the house in case people think you're toting a Tommy Gun?
 
Rob_B said:
I'd not be surprised at being lifted if I wandered the streets with this. The police should/could have realised their mistake earlier though unless they didn't want to start a trend of street gangs carrying around £40 trowels.


hori-hori-pro-with-niju-holster.png
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Yea, I've got this trowel, great bit of kit! Not that I go out in public with it, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone mistook it for a knife
 
ttaskmaster said:
So you can walk around with one of these in your hand, just like the bloke did:

Scythe Tool | Garden Scythes | Sickle Tool | Hand Scythe | Sickle

Light weight multi purpose Japanese hand sickle for cutting grasses and end of season herbaceous stems. Blade: sharp, curved in carbon steel 165mm.
www.japeto.co.uk www.japeto.co.uk

But it's the small knife securely sheathed on your tool belt that Police have a problem with?
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What do you want me to tell you.

The police enforce the law as it is written.

The law is written to achieve an objective and will always look clumsy because, well, you try defining a law that keeps weapons used for criminal activity off the street. So it's usually trying to achieve an objective in a roundabout way by describing something that reflects the weapons currently being popular.

And this, as I said, is the way to abide by the law as it is.

For what it's worth, no I don't believe you are ok to carry a sickle without good reason. It has a large enough fixed blade to be flagged as a knife. So if doing gardening on his property, as they encountered him, that's ok. But they were called on him walking down the street earlier carrying a knife as I read it and that's what they turned up about.

Also, you really gonna say to me that a 30cm knife with 2/3 of that being blade, is small?
 
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The police may have to enforce the law as it's written, except we know they don't, regularly. It brings policing into disrepute that this guy gets a caution as opposed to a friendly word, yet other cases of criminality are blithely ignored. I don't feel safer knowing a gardener has got a caution yet when I go to London Tube stations warn me not hold my phone in my hand for fear of being robbed. They don't investigate some crimes because of their views on either the victims or perpetrators but easy pickings get the thunderous weight of the law upon them. It's not that this guy was in the right and the police were in the wrong it's that they use no common sense when they should, and common sense flies out the window if anything about the case is politically sensitive.
 
Hotwired said:
The police enforce the law as it is written.
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My gardener once stepped outside my property curtilage and into the public domain WITH A KNIFE IN HIS HAND to prune some overhanging bushes. How come he didn't get arrested for that?
I mean, that is the law as written.

Hotwired said:
But they were called on him walking down the street earlier carrying a knife as I read it and that's what they turned up about.
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"Guy is CARRYING A KNIFE FOR GOD'S SAKE and a bunch of other gardening tools, on his way to the allotments. Wait here outside his house and he'll be back, you can catch him then"....
Are they having trouble meeting their monthly arrest quotas, or something?

Hotwired said:
Also, you really gonna say to me that a 30cm knife with 2/3 of that being blade, is small?
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Compared to some of the other stuff he was carrying, yes!!
 
PlacidCasual said:
The police may have to enforce the law as it's written, except we know they don't, regularly. It brings policing into disrepute that this guy gets a caution as opposed to a friendly word, yet other cases of criminality are blithely ignored. I don't feel safer knowing a gardener has got a caution yet when I go to London Tube stations warn me not hold my phone in my hand for fear of being robbed. They don't investigate some crimes because of their views on either the victims or perpetrators but easy pickings get the thunderous weight of the law upon them. It's not that this guy was in the right and the police were in the wrong it's that they use no common sense when they should, and common sense flies out the window if anything about the case is politically sensitive.
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"Words of advice" won't tend to be suitable for weapons offences, a caution is a reasonable and leniant disposal method in these circumstances.
 
ttaskmaster said:
My gardener once stepped outside my property curtilage and into the public domain WITH A KNIFE IN HIS HAND to prune some overhanging bushes. How come he didn't get arrested for that?
I mean, that is the law as written.


"Guy is CARRYING A KNIFE FOR GOD'S SAKE and a bunch of other gardening tools, on his way to the allotments. Wait here outside his house and he'll be back, you can catch him then"....
Are they having trouble meeting their monthly arrest quotas, or something?


Compared to some of the other stuff he was carrying, yes!!
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You're too excited.

A gardener, actively gardening, has their legal excuse right there.

But when you're done, if you now walk across town in a way that people can see you've got a 30cm knife, well now you're not a gardener, actively gardening, you're just some scrote open carrying a knife like there's no knife laws.

Thus we get the police dumping shoplifting and noise complaints to nick you as a priority and now it's time to pitch the theory that doing some gardening gives you carte blanche to transport a *large* knife through town by wearing it in a scabbard.

This was the actual police statement to avoid more speculation:

A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said: "At around 12.20pm on 3 July, we acted on a call from a member of the public that a man was walking in public wearing khaki clothing and in possession of a knife. Nearby officers were flagged down by the caller, who directed them towards a male.

"He was subsequently stopped and a small sickle, a large dagger which was in a sheath on a belt, and a peeling knife, were seized. He was arrested on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon and taken into custody.

"He admitted the offence and was given a conditional caution, which entailed advice and guidance around the legislation of knives and bladed weapons in a public place."
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That's between one and three bladed items on display, doesn't seem to have had anything else such as classic gardening tools. And that's how he chose to walk about in public.
 
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