[Thud]

FreeTally is right. The police do have the authority to enforce laws which protect the public in that situation. It's just that trespass is a law which only protects the property owner, not the public.

The neighbors' past complaints about rowdy teen behavior late at night in that parking lot gave the police ample justification to enter the parking lot and use ID checking (for curview violations by minors) as a tacit means of cooling everyone off and encouraging them to go somewhere else.

Teens being teens, the situation could easily get rowdy just from that and justify a police order to disperse.

But that didn't happen because Captain Vierra screwed up. He violated procedure by pushing into another captain's jurisdiction, found that the crowd was behaving in a law-abiding manner, and felt he had to justify his jurisdictional violation by ordering mass arrests. He could probably have created an incident if he had tried (see the previous two paragraphs) but for some reason decided not to wait.

I see a bright future for him in airport security.

[Dog Gone]

I never said that the police could not be present at these crowd situations. As a matter of fact, they have been present at these parking lots for weeks. What I can't seem to get through FreeTally's head is that the police lack any authority to arrest people for their mere presence there without a complaint from the property owner.