My question involves criminal law for the state of: CA
A new neighbor moved in about 2 months ago and he goes for the gang member look (with matching tattoos). He's hispanic and all our other neighbors are asians. About 2 months ago, when he had just moved in, he trespassed on my property: I was in the bedroom facing our backyard, while my wife and a friend were in the living room facing the front yard. He screeched his car onto a halt inside my driveway, then run into my backyard. My wife (not recognizing him) shouted a warning as she thought a gang member was targeting us. As he run into our backyard I got ready to defend ourselves but then I recognized him as our new neighbor. He was very aggressive and kept asking where his pitbull was. I had not seen his pitbull and there is no place for it to hide in our small backyard. I told him several times that he couldn't stay in my backyard but he was refusing to leave. He kept aggressively asking about his dog, ignoring my requests to leave my property. Eventually he realized his dog was not there and he left. He never apologized or expressed regret for his action. I came out the front door and told him not to trespass again.
About a month later I asked him to keep the music down but he got angry and called 911 claiming I was harassing him. The deputy tried to talk to the both of us to improve our interactions but my neighbor is still being a nuisance in many ways. I did tell the deputy about the trespass and whether I could press charges. The deputy asked the neighbor about it, and my neighbor admitted to it to the deputy, saying he was looking for his pitbull. The deputy told me I should let it go because 1. filing charges would deteriorate things more, and 2. it was too late. However, the statute of limitation for trespassing in CA is 3 years.
My question is whether it is possible for me to press charges, or whether the incident is too small for the legal system to care about. I read, for example, that you can ask the court to consider charges in some cases where law enforcement doesn't, but I'm a bit confused about that because I thought generally a prosecutor needs to file charges. So should I approach the Sheriff station about it, or the court, or a prosecutor, or should I just let it go, or should I keep it as one of the complaint if I file a civil lawsuit for nuisance. There are other things he does that qualify as nuisance, but I think trespassing is not a nuisance, right? I read in CA it can be an infraction, a misdemeanor or a felony depending on its severity. I imagine in this case it'd be an infraction, though refusing to immediately leave might push it towards a misdemeanor, but I might be wrong about that.

