Ever since protesters first took Liberty Square back in September, they've been discussing when Mayor Bloomberg would make the move to raid the camp. The general consensus has always been the mayor would dispatch the NYPD in the middle of the night, and in the early hours of Tuesday, that prediction proved correct. Mere days away from the two-month anniversary of the occupation, the NYPD lowered the hammer and completely dismantled the encampment, throwing away every scrap of Occupy gear, including around five thousand books from the group's library, and arresting around 70 people (note: this is an early report and arrest numbers will almost certainly change).
Hundreds of officers cleared the square under the guise of a "clear and restore" campaign that would eventually permit the demonstrators to return after the cleaning. Occupiers obviously had a difficult time swallowing the line as they watched the camping equipment that had become their homes over the past two months heaped into the back of sanitation trucks. Some protesters chained themselves to trees in Liberty, and some early reports indicate the NYPD cut down the trees in order to remove the demonstrators.
The New York Times:
The mayor’s office sent out a message on Twitter at 1:19 a.m. saying: “Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protesters can return after the park is cleared.” Fliers handed out by the police at the private park on behalf of the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, and the city, spelled out the same message.
In the past, Bloomberg has adopted the strategy of bowing to the demands of Brookfield, which decided to postpone at earlier scheduled cleaning of the park back in late October after thousands of protesters arrived at the park to defends its borders. It was perhaps his submissiveness to the hierarchy of private ownership or maybe the fact that Bloomberg's live-in girlfriend sits on the board of Brookfield Properties that kept the mayor passive these past couple of months when it came time to make decisions regarding the occupation's fate.
more:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/12296/nypd_destroy_occupy_wall_street_camp/