Detained by the police for a joke

[northernlights]

A few years back, I worked for a consulting company nut who believed that she could "spark creativity" by making people work in a big open room with our desks directly opposite people with opposing personalities. She was a psychologist and had everybody "figured out" so to speak. So there I was, a professional high-tech writer with a high IQ and quiet personality, and a job that required some privacy and a lot of quiet... sitting face-to-face with a very, very loud, abrasive and not terribly bright person (not sure what in the heck her job was other than to listen in on my phone conversations and loudly interfere and yell things at me while I was trying to interview, say, the director of user interface design at Microsoft :rolleyes).

So one day at lunch I was pretty fed up and went for a walk to get the heck out of that hell for an hour or so. We were on a dead-end street with just one other business (an inventory/distribution-type place) at the end, so I fully expected a quiet walk. I picked up an old stick and was whacking it periodically on large trees and a guardrail where a creek passed under the road. Harming nobody, doing no damage, letting off steam and just generally allowing myself to feel my misery without having to hide it under my professional "game face."

I was surprised to see a beat up old car come driving up the street, since the two companies that shared this street were not the type to have comings and goings, other than the occasional large delivery truck for the other company. The car slowed to a stop next to me. I expected someone to be asking for directions, or something along those lines. Instead, the driver, a woman, called over to me, "Is there anything I can do for you?" I was annoyed at the interference and sarcastically said, "Sure, just shoot me and put me out of my misery," and continued walking, now annoyed that I couldn't escape the continuous invasion to my inner quiet even on a walk.

I came to a path down to the creek, so turned down that and then knelt down by the water, now nicely hidden from further intruders and sound drowned out by the white noise of the water. Next thing I know, my privacy was again disturbed. Someone had snuck up behind me and stuck something along the lines of a baseball card in my face. The corner of the card stuck me inside one nostril, caused my eyes to reflexively tear. And a woman starts saying, "Just focus on the picture, just focus on the picture." Seriously, ?!?! It turns out to be a picture of the crucifixion, and I turned and saw the same woman from the street. ?!?!

Well, the nutty woman wouldn't go away and leave me alone. Then 2 cops came along, and then the woman left. And I was detained for questioning. It took them a few minutes of me answering questions, increasingly annoyed, for them to figure out that I worked in a crappy job and half my former pay, that I was minding my own business taking a break from work when this idiot woman came along. That I made a sarcastic joke trying to get rid of what turned out to be a religious nutcase.

They were not able to let me go until they got permission from their supervisor. And even then I was reprimanded and told to be careful of what I say to people.

So can somebody please explain to me why I was detained by the police for making what was obviously a joke and resulted in no harm to anybody except me thanks to the intrusion on my walk by a total stranger?

What gives others the right to prosyletize and not leave me alone?
What takes away *my* right to blow off a stranger intruding on my walk? I didn't threaten her. I didn't threaten anybody. Yet I was detained for over 20 minutes and ended up worried about losing my shitty job due to interference that amounted to harrassment by this nutcase.

Why is it that some people are allowed to say or do anything they want and not be held liable or responsible for their impact on others, even when it drives nutcases to murder or bully victims to suicide?

Yet others have no right to freedom of speech or freedom of expression, even when nobody is harmed and they're only trying to get rid of a nuisance?