Jetée

Since when have laws ever been reasonable?

Not to diverge from the issue at hand here, and trying to accurately assess "culpability" on the particular person(s) from the story, but this interpretation and maleablity of the law in order to have your right to complain about someone and successfully have them prosecuted over it can be achieved quite easily by anyone.

Honestly, everywhere in America, nearly anything at all in which more than one person congregates can be deemed as "public space", yet altogether the same, be someone else's private establishment.

There is an example of which I happen to know that is as ridiculous as this story, yet still, the person was charged: a man was drinking at the bar late, obviously hammered, yet someone complained, and he was issued with a "drunk in public" charge, even though he was in a privately-owned business. The rationale: someone on the street outside of the bar saw him acting raucously, peered through the window and identified him; and there was nothing to be done at all about it because when facing the verdict, he was told that "anything that affects the general public and their right to the assurance of their well-being, even if you are not within the general vicinity of it at the time (outside in open space), you are held responsible for it."

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As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi