Zealous supporters of a cause might well do that. I'm not suggested they aggressively accosted an officer, but they might well have approached an officer and asked him to sign the petition, and then reacted to a polite no (which an officer should have delivered regardless of whether he agreed or disagreed with the aims of the petition) by attempting to continue to solicit the officer's signature with political/religious arguments. At that point, a basically reasonable officer who disagreed with the petition might well start to get really annoyed. Still not an excuse for unprofessional, much less unconstitutional, behavior, but I suspect the booth-operators (and their staff, which likely consisted of random volunteers, one or more of whom may have been "loose cannons") may not be as squeaky clean with regard to this incident as they would like people to believe.
If you are not already in liberal politics, you are missing your calling.
your post is one of the most convoluted spins on a story I've seen in a long time