Samuel, who lives in Chorlton, had his Japanese gardening trowel, a sickle and a fruit harvesting tool confiscated from him
19:19, 06 Aug 2025Updated 09:21, 07 Aug 2025
Gardener Samuel Rowe, 35(Image: SWNS)
A gardener was arrested by armed police for “carrying a knife” while walking home with his gardening tools from the allotment.
Samuel Rowe, 35, from Chorlton, was detained, kept in a cell and cautioned by cops after they accused him of carrying a ‘large dagger’ last month.
He had just tended to his allotment vegetable patch and was trimming the hedges outside his home with a sickle when armed police swooped on July 3. Samuel had his Japanese gardening trowel, a sickle and a fruit harvesting tool confiscated from him before being taken to a police station.
He was then held in cell for more than seven hours before he was released by police when he accepted a caution for possession of an offensive weapon. The theatre manager said he was left terrified when officers armed with guns turned up outside his home and now wants the caution overturned.
The keen gardener, of Manchester, said: “I was coming back from my allotment in the morning. I’d just got home and started trimming the hedge at the top of my house, and then I heard shouting and it was armed police – two armed police telling me to ‘drop the knife.’
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“At the time I had my Japanese gardening sickle in my hand that I was using, so I dropped that along with the privet I’d been cutting. Then they turned me around, pushed me up against the house, handcuffed me behind my back, took everything out my belt.
“Then they asked me why I was there and where I’d been. Eventually they put me in the back of their van and took me to Cheadle Hulme police station, which is miles from my house.
“They got into their head I was some kind of extremist going out with knives.”
Samuel says he was then kept in cells and asked if he wanted a solicitor, but he never got to see one. He said: “It was a good seven hours before an officer was assigned my case.
“They came back and said ‘we’ve tried contacting this solicitor three times and they’ve not answered the phone’. “They said ‘we can ring them again, start the process again with another solicitor, or you do the interview without a solicitor’.
“By this point I was pretty traumatised, I’d spent hours in a cell with the lights going dim, going bright again over periods of time. I didn’t know exactly what time it was.
He was arrested by armed police(Image: SWNS)
“I’d tried getting to phone my partner to let her know where I was, with five different people, each time it was like the first time I’d asked.
“Then this officer eventually took me out, it must have been 7.30 or 8pm at this point, to let my partner know, and all they did was ring her up and tell her where I was.
“They said ‘to be honest, it’s a courtesy call, he’ll ring you when he gets out’.”
At interview, Samuel says police asked him bizarre questions such as what an allotment was. He said: “It didn’t fill me with any kind of confidence I was going to be treated fairly, because I’d been arrested doing my gardening with what they were telling me was an offensive weapon.
“All the way through the interview I was saying ‘this is what I had on me, if you look this up on the internet all these gardening sites will come up with gardening tools’. One of the armed officers took one of them out of the pouch which was branded with the gardening brand – the kind of thing you see hanging off the belt of people on Gardener’s World.
“It’s not a weird thing to have on me, but they just weren’t listening. I was explaining I had good reason to take them to and from my allotment, I said my allotment isn’t secure – people can break in and steal stuff, as they often do.”
Samuel’s tools were confiscated(Image: SWNS)
Samuel’s partner had given him the £32 Niwaki Hori Hori weeding trowel, which was in a sheath on his belt at the time of the arrest, as a birthday present. The £10 Ice Bear gardener’s sickle was purchased from an online garden centre, while the fruit harvesting tool – which he’s still not been given back – was passed down to him from his late grandmother.
Samuel said: “It makes me angry, because they shouldn’t have it. I’m still upset about her dying, and they just took it off me.”
Samuel has been growing fruit and veg – including rhubarb, broad beans, artichokes, and tomatoes, at his allotment since 2022. He was given a patch after a two-year period on his local council’s waiting list.
Now, he is worried that the police caution he accepted will appear on background checks if he applies for future job interviews. Samuel now wants to see the caution removed.
He added: “I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong in the past, because I didn’t want to have any contact with the police. I got a phone call [afterwards] from Greater Manchester’s mental health team who were then asking for questions about my lifestyle, religion, and that kind of thing.
“It’s not a large dagger – it’s a tool for digging with, and I kept telling them that. It’s not a peeling knife either, because why would I have a potato peeler in my pocket? It doesn’t make sense.”
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Greater Manchester Police said firearms officers were sent as they were the closest to the scene after they were alerted by a member of the public. The force denies Samuel was ever refused legal advice, saying it tried multiple times to contact a solicitor and he chose to decline legal advice in the end.
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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