Brickbat: The Right Tools for the Job

Police in England arrested Samuel Rowe outside his Manchester home and gave him a warning for possession of an offensive weapon after he was spotted with gardening tools. Rowe had returned home from his allotment—a small piece of property leased from the local government for gardening—with a basket of vegetables and some tools, including a trowel and a sickle, when a member of the public reported him for having a knife in public. Armed police later handcuffed Rowe and took him into custody. He explained the tools were for gardening, and that he carried them because the storage sheds at the allotment could easily be broken into. Rowe was questioned without legal representation and accepted the warning to secure his release; he is now pursuing legal action, arguing the police overreacted and failed to listen to his explanation.

Comments

[AT]

All he had to do was explain that he was returning home to honor kill his daughter for listening to western music. Or say that they were sex toys for the gay orgy he was headed to.

They would have accepted either and let him go.

[Chumby]

The police would have asked him for an invite. Akita are not popular in England.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Cuz in England, everybody is a bottom.

[mad.casual]

Mike Rowe should produce a show starring Sam Rowe that's a British version of Dirty Jobs except at the end of every episode Sam gets arrested. Eventually it breaks down into something between Breaking Bad and a Guy Ritchie movie except instead of meth or robbing banks or whatever, it's just cleaning gutters, trimming weeds, and fixing sink drains.

[Vernon Depner]

The USA is the last stand of liberal values. When we fall, the world will enter a long, dark night of totalitarianism. I'm glad I'm not young.

[SRG2]

And yet you're quite happy with the US's move to authoritarianism - presumably because you don't think it will affect you.

[Fist of Etiquette]

If he was caught with that sickle crossing the Channel it would be the person who reported him ending up in police custody.

[SQRLSY]

Garbage Island is now also Anti-Gardening Island!

Are farmers over there still allowed to posses sharpened Tools of Destruction Against The Mother Earth, with which to plow the land?

[Chumby]

Are there any woodchipper clubs in Manchester he could join?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Rowe had returned home from his allotment—a small piece of property leased from the local government for gardening—with a basket of vegetables and some tools, including a trowel and a sickle, when a member of the public reported him for having a knife in public. Armed police later handcuffed Rowe and took him into custody.'

Wow. How is this different from life in the USSR in the good old days?

[Rossami]

Even in the USSR, they didn't arrest you for having routine farming tools.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

The bastard probably didn’t intend to share his vegetables with the hungry and homeless people either.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Don't worry, the muzzi animals can still stab people with imunity

[Incunabulum]

The diverse do not garden in the UK - this in the name of diversity he must do as they do.

[Vernon Depner]

Arab men don't work.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

The US Naval Institute magazine Proceedings had an article many years ago about ships in the Saudi navy. They only made day trips, even though they were capable of being at sea for days or weeks, because Saudi sailors considered mechanical work beneath them; all maintenance was handled in port by Pakistanis or Filipinos.

[SRG2]

He's lucky. If that had been the US, they'd have assumed that because he was a gardener, he was illegal, and he'd be off to Dade County Dachau pdq.