When he was arrested, Rowe said, the officer pulled the trowel out of its sheath, and said: “That’s not a garden tool.”
[Aussie accent] “That’s not a garden tool. This is a garden tool!”
Why couldn’t the cop just:
“Hey, love your music man!”
“Huh? My music?”
“Dude, you totally resemble Robert Smith from The Cure!”
“Ooh hahaha, thanks.”
“So, what I actually approached you for, we’ve had a call that reported a shady looking person carrying a knife in this area. You seem fine, but just double checking because, well, we see weird shit sometimes and don’t want to be negligent.”
“Aha okay, fair enough. Well these look like knives perhaps but they are actually professional gardening tools. I can show you my masterpiece actually.”
[…] after a 20 minute tour in his garden.
“So cool man, should get my ass into nature more too. Sorry for the trouble and thanks for your time and understanding. Have a good one.”
“Cheers, see you around.”
✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.
A lot of police officers would be like this, and it wouldn’t make the news. Although the ARV would probably be called before the police could get there.
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.
Rowe said police had questioned him on whether he was “planning on doing something” with the tools, and he said he was also asked to explain what an allotment was.
“I had to explain in very basic terms what an allotment is to this guy,” he said. “So it didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence that I was going to be let off.”
Manchester’s brightest at work. Experts enough to know what is and isn’t a garden tool but don’t know what an allotment is 🙄 ACAB
These cops are bastards. Some cops are nice and genuine. This isn’t America. Stop trying to import american trump degeneracy into our fair kingdom
ACAB is legitimate here. It’s not a Trumpism. Day to day community policing, yes, you can have good interactions with them. But they also have no qualms smashing a peaceful protestor over the head with a baton if they’re allowed as well. There’s been enough stories of corruption and abuse within multiple UK police forces, throughout its history and in modern times, to say ACAB.
Also, is it fuck a fair kingdom.
Loud minority. Everytime I have been involved with the police they went above and beyond.
Also, is it fuck a fair kingdom.
Privilege
Unfortunately your anecdotal evidence doesn’t change history. My experience has been very mixed bag. Some have been despicable bastards and some, as you said, have gone above and beyond. But their history, and government inquiries confirming institutional racism etc cements them still in the bastard category.
I do believe they’re improving, the force isn’t just 6ft+ white, straight, cis, British men any more. It’s diverse enough that homophobia, racism, etc are challenged and not tolerated like they once were, but it still happens. They’re still not good enough to throw off the badge of ACAB.
SCAB,SAAD
Some cops are bastard, some are actually decent
SICCMABRAHBTIOTPISCBVITTNWTDBTIATOWWACYHPTALRAMASTDILA
Some Individual Cops May Actually Be Reasonable And Honest But The Institution Of The Police Is So Corrupted By Vested Interests That There’s No Way To Distinguish Between Those Individuals And The Ones Who Would Actively Cause You Harm Plus They’re Almost All Racist And Mysoginist Anyway So The Distinction Is Largely Academic
Most aren’t. Every single police officer I have interacted with has been reasonable. I only hear about these issues when they make the news.
Don’t get me wrong, it needs improving, there shouldn’t be any racism or misogyny in there, but I think just dismissing them as bastards when these are the people who’d put their lives on the line for us if we were threatened is unfair.
These cops are bastards. Some cops are nice and genuine.
This is true pretty much everywhere, even America.
Then why do Americans constantly say “all cops are bastards?”
America is not nearly based enough for Americans to “constantly say” that, unfortunately.
It’s a slogan used as a protest statement, particularly within anti-establishment and anti-police movements. The acronym has a long history, particularly within subcultures like punk, skinheads, and football hooligans. It’s also associated with anarchist and anti-authoritarian ideologies.
It also originated in England.
ACAB applies even for the nice and genuine cops.
It’s about criticisms of policing as an institution, not individuals
It’s about criticisms of policing as an institution, not individuals
No, ACAB literally means “all cops are bastards”. It removes room for ambiguity. It’s not like someone saying “fuck the police”. And then they can say “I mean the institution”.
Several decades ago my dad was pulled over on the way to work and questioned about my sisters toy knitting needle and what he intended to do with it…
Did he have to explain sounding?
UK weapon laws freak my American mind out. You can carry a folding, non-locking knife with a blade of less than 3 inches, without any justification or excuse?! Is violent knife crime a thing over there?
This stupid thing blows my mind. All I see are a bunch of harmless pocket knives.
I know, bag on the American who can carry a gun. LOL, I could carry a sword in public were I so inclined, and I often carry a machete in the woods. Believe it or not, straight to jail.
To practical matters, how do y’all transport kitchen knives, axes and other tools? Serious. And think on this, if you intend harm or self-defense, why not just carry a standard 2lb. hammer?
Also, two of my worst self-inflicted wounds were from non-locking knives, won’t touch them any longer.
Is violent knife crime a thing over there?
yes we’ve had spikes of knife attacks over recent years, a lot of it is gang related, with kids stabbing rival gang members in tit-for-tat spirals of violence.
Knife crime in general is nowhere near as bad as it is in America (and of course as you point out you guys have gun violence on top of that), but the UK is historically a peaceful country and our tolerance of friends and family being murdered in the street is a lot lower than yours.
One note, and not one to say we don’t have a gun problem. But when you tear it down, half the gun deaths are suicides, much of the rest is gang related, remainder being family and friends killing each other. The notion that there’s random shootings all over the place is false.
Notice what we report on! Brown people killing each other barely rates a blurb in local media, if any. AR-15 involved? ALL the reporting. Guy went bugshit in Maine, killed a bunch of people, no reporting on the weapon. (It was an AR-10, basically an AR-15.) Random violence gets headlines.
Most gun violence sites rate any shooting on school grounds as a “school shooting”. I could pop one off at midnight at the local high school. School shooting! Cop shoots a kid. School shooting! While horryfying, it just doesn’t happen as much as it’s made out. We had plenty of guns when I was a kid, no school shootings until Columbine popularized the sport.
I feel this gets the point across. You might notice the MotherJones numbers, hardly a conservative site.
Maybe I’ll contradict my earlier statement; America doesn’t have a gun problem, America has a culture problem. I can illustrate using a local anecdote.
Local guy sees someone breaking into the empty trailer which is on his lot. Motherfucker thought it was A-OK to hide inside the treeline and shoot the guy the next night. He felt within his rights to hunt another human being. People on NextDoor.com were defending the shooter. Well, the cops disagreed, that’s murder one.
