(C) BoingBoing
This story was originally published by BoingBoing and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



British police arrest gardener carrying his tools [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-07-28

It is generally illegal to carry weapons in Britain, and anything that can be used as a weapon is a weapon, so long as the authorities can imagine relevant context and intent. Gardener with a sharp tool? Arrest that man.

A man who had returned home from his allotment with a trug of vegetables and gardening tools strapped to his belt was arrested by armed police, after a member of the public said they had seen "a man wearing khaki clothing and in possession of a knife".

The item in question was a fancy trowel widely sold in the U.K.

When he was arrested, Rowe said, the officer pulled the trowel out of its sheath, and said: "That's not a garden tool." "I said it is, because it was in the Niwaki-branded pouch that you get at garden centres," Rowe said. He was then taken to a police station and questioned. "They started asking questions, like if I was autistic or anything like that, asking me whether I'd ever been in the army, whether I told people I was in the army," he said.

The Guardian doesn't mention that the style of the tools he possessed may be salient. They were apparently a hori hori and a gardening sickle. Asian weapons are a longtime subject of moral panic and tabloid hysteria in Britain. In the 1970s, the depiction of nunchaku was censored in film, which led to comical censorship of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the 1980s and weapons legislation that obsessed over Japanese terms and designs. Just this year, legislators spent significant time on specifically banning "Ninja swords" after one was used in a single murder.

Best to know the rights you don't have before opening your mouth to explain to police officers it's OK, it's from Japan. You're not setting them at ease, you're setting off spooky flutes and kabuki clappers in their tiny brains and definitely making it worse.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/07/28/british-police-arrest-gardener-carrying-his-tools.html

Published and (C) by BoingBoing
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/boingboing/