Here's a story out of England that gives me pause, as an electrician. Seems a man was tasered by police, in February 2011, for carrying a couple of screwdrivers in his pocket. They wrestled him to the floor of a Swansea shop and gave him four bursts of fifty-thousand volts.
Chris Thomas, 45, was fixing on some lights in a nearby pub, as a favor, and forgot he still had the tools in his pants when he left the Railwaymen's Club. Security staff in the BHS store spotted the screwdrivers and called in the troops, He'd had a few pints and was unsteady on his feet but otherwise not acting suspiciously.
I like to think they deduced he was an electrician at some point and shouted:
"YOU''RE GROUNDED!"
We're more tolerant, in the good ol' USA, for now, of a workman, not on the job, with a tool in his clothes. There is a fierce debate going on right now in the United Kingdom, about whether to ban all knives in public. So you can see why a couple of screwdrivers raised alarm on the west side of the chunnell. And why Mr. Thomas was subdued, arrested, charged and almost put on trial.
The case was thrown out, but everyone involved seemed to shake their heads and wonder how a clear misunderstanding was able to grind expensively on.
"It's a ridiculous waste of tax-payers' money to bring this to court. But I just want to move on now," said Mr. Thomas.
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