Police arrested more than 200 anti-Wall Street protesters in downtown Los Angeles in an early morning raid Wednesday that cleared out hundreds from the two-month old encampment. “We have a little over 200” arrests, police spokesman Lorenzo Quezada told AFP. “All of the arrests were for misdemeanor failure to disperse an unlawful assembly,” he said.
“A lot of people did voluntarily leave” when told to do so, Quezada said, adding that authorities cleared away “tents, debris, miscellaneous, and personal items.”
A 9:00 am (1700 GMT) press conference was planned to discuss the eviction, said Lozada, adding that the eviction was still continuing as authorities tried to clear out a few, resolute stragglers from the green spaces just outside city hall. “There are a couple of guys left still in trees,” Lozada said. “There are police officers there trying to bring them down.”
The settlement of tents and sleeping bags in Los Angeles was one of the biggest of scores of similar occupation protests that have sprung up across the United States in recent weeks to protest corporate greed and financial inequity. The demonstrations have worn thin in many places however, including in the northeastern city of Philadelphia, where a similar police raid also cleared a downtown park of its protesters at around the same time as the Los Angeles operation.
Philadelphia riot police converged on an Occupy Wall Street camp in the eastern part of the city, clearing a tent camp and setting off an hours-long march through downtown. The police, many mounted on bicycles, initially flanked the group of some 50 marchers, but as rush hour approached they cornered the protesters in a side street and arrested around half of them, an AFP reporter said.
“I think our officers showed a lot of restraint. We’ve been very patient,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told AFP. In Los Angeles, dozens of officers in helmets formed lines to seal off an area around the City Hall park camp, while others began arresting around a dozen protesters and leading them away in plastic handcuffs.
