In the latest police effort to dismantle unlawful encampments erected by Wall Street Occupiers, Philadelphia and LA police swept through and cleared out the two sites where protesters had recently been set up tents.
Philadelphia:
Police swarmed around City Hall and rousted Occupy Philadelphia protesters from their encampment overnight, more than two days after a deadline passed for them to leave.
The occupiers responded by roaming around Center City, scattering and regrouping with police following their every move in a chaotic night of cat-and-mouse that ended before daylight.
"The Dilworth occupation is over," Mayor Nutter said at a news conference just before 7 a.m.
Crews were using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to clear up debris and fire hoses to wash down the plaza as he spoke.
He called the police operation to clear the plaza "tremendously well planned and executed."
He said at least 50 people were arrested, 44 of them in a 5 a.m. face off on North 15th Street behind the Inquirer and School District buildings.
Los Angeles
Police in riot gear and biohazard suits removed anti-Wall Street activists from an encampment outside the Los Angeles City Hall on Wednesday, arresting an estimated 200 people.
Overnight on the East Coast, about 100 Occupy protesters in Philadelphia swiftly and peacefully vacated their camp but later 52 were arrested around the city on charges ranging from obstructing a highway to aggravated assault on a police officer, officials said.
In Los Angeles, busloads of police closed in on the 8-week-old Occupy LA camp after midnight and declared the hundreds of protesters congregated on the lawn, sidewalks and streets around City Hall to be an unlawful assembly, ordering them to disperse or face arrest, in line with an eviction order from the mayor.
This follows weeks of crackdowns in cities across the country, the most widely publicized was in New York when police evicted Occupiers from Zuccotti Park, where it all started, and a court decided protesters were not legally able to set up encampments in the Park but they were free to protest there as long as they followed Park rules.
There has not been much reported news from that location since the Zuccotti Park Occupiers were disbanded.
No doubt this has been a relief to New York City which the AP has reported $7 million had been spent by taxpayers in "police overtime and other municipal services', all associated with costs to the taxpayers of New York because of the Occupiers.
In Oakland where another highly publicized crack down dismantled their tent city, the city had already had a nearly $58 million budget gap and taxpayers were nailed with $2.4 million responding to the protests.
Without the encampment, SFGate reports that Occupiers have hit their "second phase" which is to "provoke confrontations" in order to stay in the news, but this has "turned off many people who lament the cost of extra policing and the damage done by vandals."
While many liberals have lamented polling that showed the general public agrees with certain concepts generated by the Occupy movement, that has not translated into support for the movement itself because of the constant strife, public reports on death threats from Occupiers and supporters, violence, public urination and defecation by Occupiers, provoked confrontations instigated by Occupiers, unsanitary conditions in which the Occupiers created with their tent cities, diseases running rampant throughout those tent cities, etc...
Mid November the Democratically leaning Public Policy Polling found that 45 percent of voters oppose the Occupiers with 33 percent being supportive of their goals. A month before that PPP found 36 percent opposed and 35 percent were supportive. In just one month, according to the PPP polls, Occupier antics cost themselves 2 percent support and gained themselves 9 percent more opposition.
Two days ago, November 28, 2011, Rasmussen found that 55 percent of likely voters now hold an unfavorable view of the Occupiers, with 39 percent holding a "somewhat favorable view."
Occupiers outstayed their welcome like a house guest that never leaves. The longer they stay the less support they are getting.
You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.
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