I like daedalus's answer best so far. But Farscape, let's examine something you said: "
.... You can't create a law on the spot to suit your dislike for something".
Well, yes and no. What eforcement officials DO have the power to do, is interpret the laws/rules to fit various situations they encounter in the field day-to-day.
For example: I too had a case where I got booted from a particular park, where I felt there was no prohibitions (no park's rules levels, nor any type of city-wide prohibition that specifically said "metal detectors"). When I objected to the guy "but why?", the public works landscaper guy got agitated, and threatened to call the cops, so I left. When I got home, I researched the matter, and found that ..... indeed, there were
no prohibitions specifically addressing detectors. So I took the matter to a lawyer friend of mine, and asked "can they just nilly willy make up rules to nix out something they just don't happen to like? ie.: doesn't there have to be a specific rule?". The wise lawyer friend said that they are entitled to apply existing rules, to apply to a myriad of situations, that could arise in the field. Because you see Farscape, laws and rules are PURPOSEFULLY written vaguely, so as to apply to a lot of situations that could come up in the field.
For example: The law says "No nudity". So farscape goes out there with a single sock on. The cop comes up and tries to arrest farscape for nudity. You object: "But officer, I wasn't technically nude, since I still had one sock on!". Then you and the cop will just have to get into a jousting match of what "nudity" is defined as, blah blah blah. And so on, and so forth. If the upper-managers above these rank-&-file didn't support those in the field for any type judgement call like this, everyone would be arguing semantics, all the time! Ie.: "
But officer, I wasn't walking my dog in the park. Because you see, he only has 3 legs. Thus he "hops" not "walks", and so forth, and so on.
Thus, the real question is, did the cop (via the lady who keeps calling it in) over-step the allowed judgement and interpretation powers he has? You have to ask yourself, since there's no rule against md'ing, then they probably morph something else to apply: like the usual "defacement" clauses. Naturally, you think you were "defacing" anything (and I'm sure we'd all agree with you). But if you are in front of a judge, are you going to be able to prevail on that defense, that since there is no resulting visual indications, that you are not guilty of that? I mean, all the cop would have to do is say "
He was digging", and then you retort, "the law doesn't disallow that, it only disallows defacing and vandalism, which implies the END result. My end result was nothing, thus, I was not in violation", etc... It's gonna be a hard one to argue about, because you can bet, in the judge's mind, that if he allows you, then he has to allow every other yahoo out there, and ..... the next guy may not be as neat with his incisions
Or perhaps the cop's beef is about "collecting" verbage, which is also usually written into every city's park's rules. They're there to prevent people from backing up their pickups to harvest all the tan-bark, or sand, or flowers, etc... from the park's gardens. While the intent of those "no collecting" rules are clear, yet there is nothing to stop them from being applied to "collecting" coins, rings, metal, etc... Believe me, I've seen that reason as one floated by a govt. entity for booting someone! Try to argue out of that one, and it's pretty durn hard
This is why I do 90% of my hunting at odd hours, when no lookie-lou busy bodies are around (even hunt parks after night-fall now!). Not that I think I'm doing anything wrong, but because I don't want to "hear otherwise".
But with that said, if you have no way to be more discreet and not be seen by this busy-body, and if you really want to continue to hunt those zones, I think I'd go Daedalus' route: get a ticket, and go fight it.
Someone did that in a San Francisco park (well, not on
purpose to
LOOK for the ticket, but ..... they got one in a municipal park). They went and fought it. A simple 2 sentence explanation of their "innocent hobby that did no harm, thus it was all a noble mis-understanding on the part of the nice cop" blah blah. Took less than 30 seconds once they'd waited their turn in line at traffic court or whatever it was. Before the md'r could even finish his next sentence, the judge said "dismissed", and called for the next in line. That md'r carried that dismissal paper around with him for years afterwards, for in case he needed to show it (he never did need to btw, as he never heard anymore peeps).
from the City manager or chief of police, problem solved. 
Rick
