Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

MY dad and I went to Uxbridge Police station one Sunday morning after clearing out our kitchen and garage, wanting to hand in numerous kitchen knives and a couple of hunting knives that my dad had from a trip more than 20 years ago.

The community police officer at the desk said they did not accept them and that we shouldn’t have driven with them in the car, because if we had been pulled over by the police then we could have been arrested for carrying dangerous weapons.

We explained that we had been to the council dump in Harefield, but they did not have a knife bin and we thought it best and safest to hand them into the police instead of putting them on our general waste collection.

They then said ‘you can Google where the knife bin sites are in the borough’.

Not good for my 80-year-old dad who does not have access to the internet.

It turns out the nearest one to us is Barra Hall Circus, but this is a good 10 minutes from us and if we went there then we would be breaking the law, travelling with the knives in the car

When we got to Barra Hall, it was very intimidating because there were some young people drinking near the bin and we wondered if they might try and take the knives out once we’d put them in.

Why don’t the police want to help people trying to do the correct thing? They just didn’t seem interested and we left feeling that we were wasting their time.

Maybe they should advertise a bit more of where the knife bins are and maybe get more than three in this borough and why not outside police stations, as they seem the obvious place?

Reading the article on August 31, it states you can call 101 if you find a knife and the police will arrange collection.

I guess they won’t be arrested for carrying a dangerous weapon!! NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS SUPPLIED