ONE ENGLISH KAREN’S CALL TO POLICE GETS ARMED POLICE TO ARREST MAN WITH GARDENING TOOLS
I can’t say I’m completely surprised. But England has some needlessly-police-calling Karens, too. And in this particular instance, there’s some cultural history that makes it even dumber. As an American, I’m pretty aware that there are a variety of laws, depending on state and county, where it’s illegal to carry a knife, or at least a knife over a certain size. But in England, you’re not allowed to carry weapons almost at all. If the authorities’ imagination can see it as a weapon, it’s a weapon. But who could have imagined that Japanese gardening tools would be enough to get you arrested?
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NOT SURE WHAT’S SO SUSPICIOUS ABOUT CARRYING VEGETABLES AND GARDENING TOOLS, EVEN IN ENGLAND
Yet that’s exactly what happened to Samuel Rowe, who had the cheek (temerity in the States) to walk around with his vegetables with a trowel in its sheath hangin from from his belt. And it wasn’t just any trowel, it was a Japanese gardening tool, a hori hori. He also had a Japanese gardening sickle. I don’t tend to consider a guy wearing gardening khakis carrying vegetables with his Japanese gardening tools to be a threat. But then again I’m not a vegetable or a Karen. But one Karen in England begged to differ, and called the police with the message they saw “a man wearing khaki clothing and in possession of a knife.”
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BUT ENGLAND HAS A PENCHANT FOR FREAKING OUT OVER JAPANESE WEAPONS, AND NOW GARDENING TOOLS
And boy, did the police respond! They arrived, armed (unusual in England) and arrested poor gardener Samuel Rowe on the spot. And to explain the cultural history, it seems the English have had some periods of histrionics when it comes to weapons from Asia. In the 1970’s, it was so silly that censors removed any inclusion of nunchaks! A decade later, that included the censoring of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, too! And this year, there was a single murder committed with a “ninja sword,” resulting in an attempt to ban them all. And it seems that a fancy Japanese gardening tool in the form of a trowel is scary too.
Even though it’s sold all across England.
