fair enough.
Yes, we don't know for sure. My only two points were:
1) based on the eyewitness accounts, it appears the cop severely overreacted (and a couple of those witnesses claim to not even have known the runners)
2) such overreactions on the part of cops happen a bit more often than I think you realize. Sure, some of them have a hard job, but there is no reason for them (the ones that do) to flip out over the most minor of actions or words from a person. Again, read those links I provided for you.
(and as an aside, my 75 year old uncle was dropping me, my wife, and my children at that airport not long ago. We were all standing right near the car, and my uncle helped get a suitcase out of the trunk and place it on the sidewalk for us. The cop sees all of us clearly standing 3 feet from the car, but he starts calling in my uncle's plate anyway because he was not actually in the car for 25 seconds and is standing right next to the open trunk. my uncle says, "ok, officer, I am going now." And I just add- "he was just dropping us off." He turns, looks angrily at me and shouts: "did you hear the announcement?!?! NO UNATTENDED VEHICLES? DO YOU KNOW WHAT UNATTENDED MEANS?? It's a different world today" or some such nonsense. Well, guess what jackass overpaid glorified traffic-cop state trooper, the vehicle WAS being attended to (we were standing next to it and watching it, ie, attending to it), so I guess YOU don't know the meaning of "unattended", but I do . Maybe you were thinking of "unoccupied", which was not what the announcements said.
Now THAT's the shit I am talking about. There is absolutely no reason why he had to start calling in my uncles plates or get belligerent with us. A simple "please move your vehicle sir" would have sufficed, period. I am sure if I am said two more words to the guy, even something as simple as, "well, we were attending to the car actually" he would have been in my face ready to cuff me. It's total bullshit for cops to act that way, and so many do. And the reason? Because most of the time they get away with it. )