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Radar, the manager did not eject them from the mall parking lot. The cops did.
The cops can make an assumption about the land, and we permit them that leeway in the legal system in order so that they may maintain the law of the land.
Many years ago a bunch of us descended on an abandoned airplane hangar for a skate-in. The cops noticed us and told us to get out. We agreed. Should the cops have called the land owner and asked whether we were given permission? If we asserted that we DID have permission, even though that was ludicrous, should the cops have respected that assertion until the land owner showed up? Then the landowner is not being protected. In Radar land we would not have to produce ID and could skate on until the cops found the owner, at which time we would be long gone. People would shit on each other's land all the time, can you imagine the environmental impact?
Instead, we give the cops the ability to make reasonable assumptions and temporarily arrest people on the basis of suspicions. So if I am leaving a building through the window at 3 AM with an entertainment unit, the cops have the right to assume I'm robbing somebody, unless I can come up with a reasonable explanation. They don't have to prove on the spot that it's not my house or my stuff.
In the case of public spaces we can bet, really, that the owner's general wishes about how this very public space is used is well-understood by the authorities. Everybody with a brain understands that no mall owner is going to permit solicitation in a crowded parking lot at night. Chances are it's even in the lease agreement, both ways - the lessee can't permit it and the mall owner can't permit it.
So what do the cops do: generally I would guess, they escalate the consequences for the person until they have to actually take action. In the case of us at the hangar, we knew and expected that we were cooked, and we were just taking a chance that our hour of cleanup would pacify anyone who came upon us. They didn't have to apply any force at all to us to get us to leave: they just asked. I betcha this woman was asked politely to leave, got hardened by her beligerence at the theater manager, and decided to play the game until she actually got arrested. These middle-aged lefties think that way... the protest isn't done until someone's proven their meddle by spending time in the back of a paddy wagon.
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