Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

You are correct. Unless an order is specifically and explicitly reciprocal or he has a separate EPO (Emergency Protective Order) against you, then your actions are not restricted, only his. Even in cases where a protected party tries to sucker the restrained party into meeting him/her so as to create a violation, the protected party has not violated the order. (a nasty abuse of the TRO or EPO of which I disapprove, by the way)

However, given the reaction of the officer (could he be a friend of the restrained party?), I would have a copy of the order on me at all times. In case of a repeat of that strange interpretation of the EPO, pull it out and ask him to point out where the order restricts your movement in any way.

If your neighbor does not have an order against you, the officer was incorrect.

From a practical standpoint, his answer was cop-speak for "I really don't want to take a full blown report because somebody flipped somebody off."

Civil harassment restraining orders are designed to protect people from serious interference by third parties. The standard order says the restrained person cannot "harass, attack, strike, threaten, assault (sexual or otherwise), hit, follow, stalk, destroy personal property, keep under surveillance, or block movements," of the protected person.

I don't know whether a court would find that flipping you off as you walked past your neighbor's home was actually a violation of one of those conditions. The officer may also have felt that you were trying to "sucker" your neighbor into a violation, as Mr. Dinday put it -- especially if there were other available routes, or if you could have walked on the other side of the street.

My advice? Save the police reports for a serious violation of the restraining order. If you call the cops every time the neighbor flips you off or looks at you funny, you may appear to be an overly-sensitive crackpot if you have to testify about a serious violation.