It’s a rakeout! Police send a helicopter, 12 men and dog unit to tackle ... a gardener
IT was admittedly an unusual time of day to embark on a spot of gardening. So when Wayne Dodd was seen brandishing a metal object in his friend’s garden shortly before midnight, staff at a nearby nursing home presumed he was up to no good.
They immediately called the police and told them that Mr Dodd was waving a weapon around.
Fearing the worst, police despatched a helicopter, armed officers, a dog unit and three other patrol cars – thought to be carrying at least 12 officers – only to discover the ‘weapon’ was actually a rake.
The saga unfolded when Mr Dodd, 43, started helping his friend Stephen Hogan set up a heavy roller he had just bought for a gardening project.
Mr Hogan’s 23-year-old son Sean also volunteered to help put it together.
After enjoying a few drinks, they decided to test out the roller on an unkempt area of Mr Hogan’s garden in Christchurch, Dorset, shortly after 11pm.
Minutes later, Mr Dodd picked up a rake and was preparing to use it on the garden when they heard a helicopter overhead.
Mr Hogan, a 55-year-old plumber, said: ‘All of a sudden there was a lot of commotion coming from out the front.
‘My wife Alison looked outside and saw police cars and armed police officers and dogs. We could hear the police helicopter above us. Then two policeman approached the front door. They said there was someone with a weapon in the area.
‘They asked to come into the back garden and asked if someone was out there because their eyes in the sky, as they called them, had seen someone. She said that there was and asked if that was a problem.’ Officers walked through the bungalow and into the back garden, where they found Mr Dodd raking the grass under the glare of an external light.
‘They came in and found Wayne with the rake and then left,’ Mr Hogan said.
‘He had been helping me flatten out some ground using the new roller and was using the rake by the time the police came. We weren’t making a lot of noise.’
Mr Dodd added: ‘I was rolling an old part of the garden and saw the helicopter ... by the time the two policemen came I was raking over the ground and then they just left.’
Sending a police helicopter, an armed response unit, a dog unit and three patrol cars to the address on Friday night is thought to have cost up to £5,000. Mr
‘Thought it was something sinister’
Hogan said he was reassured that the police responded to a potentially serious i ncident so quickly, but questioned whether so many officers were necessary.
‘We were more bemused than anything,’ he said. ‘It is reassuring that the police checked it out so thoroughly, but in the end they did all that just to see what was going on in our garden.
‘I think the sheer number of police and armed police made people in the neighbourhood think there was something more sinister to it.
‘It didn’t help that after leaving our house the police just packed up and left without telling the neighbours it was a false alarm. I’m not sure why they used the helicopter and went to that sort of expense when they are cutting back at the moment on police numbers.’
A spokesman for Dorset Police said: ‘At 11.41pm on Friday, we had a report of someone with a weapon but it turned out to be someone who was doing some latenight gardening using a rake.
‘It was a misinterpretation of what the caller had seen.’
The fiasco comes after a dozen armed police descended on a town centre earlier this month after a teenage girl’s tennis racket was mistaken for a firearm.
Droitwich High Street in Worcestershire was sealed off on Sunday July 12 while officers searched the area. It was only after CCTV pictures were checked that they realised the so-called gunman was a girl with a racket and tube of balls.