To report this guy to the police

[bagpuss90]

Just been speaking to my mum , her and my dad are both in their 80s . Both enjoy walking nowhere too challenging. Anyway she told me they were out walking yesterday and accidentally wandered into someone’s land. Dads not great at reading maps. She told me the land owner was very verbally aggressive and threatening towards them. Told them if they didn’t turn back he’d he’d kick their arses off his land . Dad apparently tried to ask for directions and got sworn at. Told them if they did it again they’d wish to god they hadn’t. Mum was quite upset. Okay they shouldn’t have been there. But AIBU in thinking this is really no way to speak to an elderly couple and totally OTT ? Should I report him ?

The introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 ('PCSAC') on 28 June 2022 makes trespass, in some cases, a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment of up to four months and/or a fine of up to £2,500

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He wasn't right was he. He was being a dick. There are ways to handle things.

The landowner shouldn't have spoken like that but I'd let it go.

This made me laugh 😂
Seriously op, that farmer is an utter bellend, there’s no need to talk to people like that over a mistake. It’s hard to know what was going through the farmers head though. Pp have mentioned if he’s a sheep farmer then he’s likely to have been running on 3 hours sleep a night for weeks now, he may have thought your parents were taking the piss and didn’t have the time or inclination to take a couple of confused old people by the arm and lead them off his land. What would you even say to the police?

I'm normally a calm and polite person but even I have my moments when quite frankly I can be arsey and generally not nice. It's not big, clever or acceptable but sometimes we are just human beings.

I doubt it was personal. He has to be nasty to trespassers in order to make the experience negative enough for them that they won’t turn CF and do it again. If he was nice about it people would take the piss.

If your parents were obviously lost, and apologised, then he was completely out of order. You don’t threaten an elderly couple. Something tells me he wouldn’t have behaved like that towards a big, angry looking 40-year-old builder.

JoonT
Exactly. Also no sheep about -just checked with mum. She says her and dad are pretty sure it wasn’t a farm

He sounds like a horrible aggressive person - there are ways to firmly assert yourself and let people know that you are annoyed without being downright vicious. If it’s not clear that it is private land then it’s down to him to make it so. No point in involving the police though.

If your dad can’t read a map they need to stick to way-marked routes.

I guess Mumsnetters aren't a fan of Nick Hayes.

You could consider phoning the local station because he did threaten them. There was a local farmer near me who threatened several people, actually when they were on the public highway, no trespass involved. Various people reported him, which was important because when he got to the stage when he pulled a gun out on someone, police had a record of his behaviour. They went and had a word with him and he calmed down considerably after that.

Maybe give your mum some map reading lessons. Perhaps she'll be better at it than your dad.

We had a situation along the lines of this. The police knew the person in question, were looking for an excuse to go and have a poke around on their land so used my complaint as an excuse, went up
there and ended up arresting him for something totally unrelated to my complaint (but for something they’d suspected him of for some time). It’s worth filing an incident report online.

So if it wasn't a farm, where did they trespass??
We have a footpath going through one of our fields and it's utterly infuriating when people just womble about where ever they fancy it. I wouldn't threaten to kick people's asses but after telling the 5th person that week to please get off private land you tend to loose the will to be civil!
People don't realise how much of a huge biosecurity risk it is too.

This! It’s easy to be the big hard man when you’re threatening someone more vulnerable who wouldn’t be able to fight back. I bet he would have taken great delight in threatening a lone woman as well.

He sounded like a nasty little shit

we used to regularly find people in our garden
a surprising number refused to leave when nicely asked

No, she wants the landowner not to be an intimidating cunt.

In my book you just don’t speak to elderly people like that

Then you go and deal with him. Nothing to do with the police.

MasterBeth
Yep. I totally get they were in the wrong . But the guy’s attitude was just uncalled for

He was rude but not a police matter no

I'm surprised at how many people think this behaviour is ok. The state of people today is because we accept unacceptable behaviour. Threatening elderly people who have made an innocent mistake is not acceptable and yes the police should be cautioning arseholes like this guy.

Being rude isn't a police matter I'm afraid.

He was well out of order. Speaking to 2 elderly people in such a threatening manner is disgraceful.

It says far more about him than it does your parents. I'm sorry they were so nastily treated and hope it won't put them off their walks.

Not sure its a police matter, but if your parents felt threatened there is no harm logging a complaint.

It is not a normal reaction to be that agressive to an elderly couple out for a stroll, who accidently wandered onto your land.
Assuming, of course, your parents were not packing sub machine guns, hunting knives and rambo attire and had scaled a 6ft fence clearly marked 'private'.

The aggressiveness would certainly make me wonder why he was so angry to encounter an elderly couple on his land. Either he is just an agressive arse, or he had something to hide.