200 arrested during Occupy Wall Street eviction

Police wearing helmets and carrying shields spent around three hours clearing protesters from Zuccotti Park, in New York’s financial district. Police spokesman Paul Browne said that the majority of protesters left voluntarily, but around 70 people were arrested for defying orders.

The office of the New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said that the protesters should “temporarily leave” the area and remove their “tents and tarps”, but added that protesters would be allowed to return – without tents and belongings – once the park was cleaned. Brookfield Office Properties, owner of the park, said that the protest camp “posed an increasing health and safety hazard”.

The First Amendment does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others – nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor

Local businesses and park owners had complained to authorities, saying that their trade was suffering as a result of the protest that has lasted nearly two months.

In a statement, Mayor Bloomberg said protesters were welcome to excercise their First Amendment right, but added that this right “does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others – nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law”.

Read more: Where now for the Occupy protesters?

Pepper spray and batons

A live web stream from the park showed police clearing out tents, and protesters reported the use of pepper spray and batons. Hundreds of police arrived at the camp before dawn on Tuesday morning and to start the eviction, using a loudspeaker to tell protesters they would be arrested if they didn’t cooperate.

They barricaded the area around the park and moved people to nearby streets that were lit by spotlights.

Samantha Tuttlebee, 35, had been volunteering at the camp’s medical tent, when it was raided. “I’m shocked. They put my arms behind my back. They are really violent,” she said. “We were trying to leave and they threw us out.”

You can’t evict an idea whose time has come. This burgeoning movement is more than a protest, more than an occupation and more than any tactic. Occupy Wall Street

Protester Sam Wood said: “they gave us about 20 minutes to get our things together. It’s a painful process to watch, they are sweeping through the park.” He added that police “trashed” tha camp’s library and set to tearing the whole camp apart.

NYT: An hour after the raid started, most of the structures that had served as the foundation of a miniature city over recent weeks were dismantled by Department of Sanitation workers in green uniforms. The tents holding the library, media center, legal aid, information and sanitation areas were all broken down and placed into rolling trash containers.

Media blackout?

New York authorities are expected to face criticism over what some journalists are calling a media blackout that prevented reporting on the eviction.

Journalists on the ground tweeted that they were not allowed access to the park. Democracy Now! reporter @RDevro tweeted: ‘the NYPD are now setting up a “pen” for the press as far from the remaining protesters as they can place us.’

Teporters from mainstream media, including the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, NBC, CBS, Reuters, and the New York Observer were also kept away from protesters and according to the Tech Herald, some were stripped of their media passes and told to leave or face arrest.

The Wall Street Journal reports that police knocked over the media tent that protesters had been using to stream live video from Zuccotti Park.

Al Jazeera was one of the few television crews who gained access to the park.

Protests removed across US

On Monday, police in Oakland clashed with protesters at the Frank Ogawa Plaza and arrested 33 people. In Portland, Oregon, where 1,000 people had gathered as part of the city’s ‘Occupy’ protest, another 50 people from various camps across the city were arrested by police.

Protesters have been camping out in Zuccotti Park – an open space in New York’s financial district – since 17 September to voice their outrage at an unfair financial system. A statement from the Occupy Wall Street group in response to the police raid, stated: “you can’t evict an idea whose time has come.

“This burgeoning movement is more than a protest, more than an occupation and more than any tactic…Such a movement cannon be evicted.”