Officers attempting to cite a landscape crewmember for violating a local bylaw prohibiting gas-powered leaf blowers in Brookline, Mass., arrested the man for refusing to identify himself.

Police in Brookline, Mass., arrested a landscape worker for refusing to cooperate with officers that accused him of violating a local leaf blower ordinance.

A bylaw in the Boston suburb states that gasoline-powered landscaping tools cannot be used between May 15 and Sept. 15, and landscaping work cannot begin until after 9 a.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. First-time violations are only supposed to incur a $50 dollar fine.

Brookline Police spotted two workers using gas-powered leaf blowers in a parking lot before 9 a.m. on September 14, which was both a Saturday and the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur.

Officers informed the crew, which included three other workers pulling weeds and using a lawn mower, that they were in violation of the bylaw and had to stop working.

The officers asked for identification from the two men with the leaf blowers to issue citations. One of the men, later identified as Marvin Astillo, refused to identify himself and began to walk away from the officers after a second and third request. Astillo was subsequently arrested for refusing to submit his name and identification to the police, in addition to the bylaw violations.

The second man, whose name was not released, identified himself as the foreman and was fined $100 for ordinance violations.

Norfolk County District Attorney spokesman David Traub told the Boston Globe that Brookline's district court judge dismissed the complaint against Astillo the following Monday, before his scheduled arraignment. The complaint was dismissed because only criminal violations are supposed to go through the arraignment process; the leaf blower incident was a civil infraction, Traub said.

Brookline Police Chief Daniel O'Leary said that if Astillo had just co-operated with police from the start, he never would have been arrested.

"Our goal is not to arrest people," O'Leary said. "Our goal is to get compliance."