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| ‘Occupy City Hall’ Encampment Taken Down in Pre-Dawn Raid by N.Y.P.D. | ‘Occupy City Hall’ Encampment Taken Down in Pre-Dawn Raid by N.Y.P.D. |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Police officers in riot gear pushed dozens of people out of the “Occupy City Hall” encampment in City Hall Park near dawn on Wednesday, shutting down a monthlong demonstration against police brutality that recently had attracted numerous homeless people. | Police officers in riot gear pushed dozens of people out of the “Occupy City Hall” encampment in City Hall Park near dawn on Wednesday, shutting down a monthlong demonstration against police brutality that recently had attracted numerous homeless people. |
| A phalanx of officers in helmets started closing in on protesters and homeless people shortly before 4 a.m., moving in lock-step behind a wall of plastic shields, according to videos posted on social media. | A phalanx of officers in helmets started closing in on protesters and homeless people shortly before 4 a.m., moving in lock-step behind a wall of plastic shields, according to videos posted on social media. |
| Seven people were arrested after sporadic clashes erupted between officers and residents of the camp, officials said. | Seven people were arrested after sporadic clashes erupted between officers and residents of the camp, officials said. |
| As the police moved through the camp, officers took down a series of tarps and makeshift tents that demonstrators and several homeless people had been living in and tossed them into city garbage trucks. | |
| By 8 a.m., city cleaning crews had arrived to scrub graffiti from the walls of several buildings in the area. | |
| The occupation began on June 23 when about 100 people set up camp on a small patch of grass to the east of City Hall with the mission of bringing pressure on the City Council to cut the New York Police Department’s funding at an upcoming vote before the July 1 budget deadline. | |
| Within a week, the small squatters’ colony grew into a ramshackle community with food service, a hand-sanitizing station and even a library where campers could go to hear lectures on mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. | |
| Hundreds slept in the park each night, festooning benches and fences with signs decrying racism and police brutality. The plaza’s sidewalks became a kind of horizontal gallery of protest art. | |
| The project reached its peak on June 30 when thousands crowded into the plaza after dark to watch the Council vote on a giant video screen. While the Council ultimately decided to shift nearly $1 billion away from the police, many of the protesters expressed disappointment, wanting deeper cuts. Most went home within days. | |
| Those that remained quickly assumed a new responsibility: caring for the dozens of homeless people who had flocked to the site — which protesters were calling Abolition Park — for its free meals, open-air camping and communal sensibility. | |
| While organizers said they felt a duty to tend to some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, problems soon arose. Fights broke out. Passers-by were harassed. | |
| Some local residents, even those who said they supported the project’s politics, started to complain that the once-peaceful compound had turned into a shantytown marred by violence and disorder. | |
| The camp, just feet from City Hall, presented a thorny political problem for Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has been routinely criticized by the demonstrators and his Black supporters since the larger, citywide protests, prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, started in late May. | |
| This week, Mr. de Blasio said in response to questions by reporters that he would let police officials decide when to shut down the encampment. | |
| Neither the police nor officials at City Hall immediately responded to questions about why officers had chosen to act on Wednesday morning. | |
| The decision to close the encampment came only days after President Trump sent teams of heavily-armed federal agents to Portland to protect federal property and to subdue protests there that have turned violent on occasion. | |
| Mr. Trump has also threatened to send agents to New York and other cities. |