Cops Clear Occupy; Orderly Eviction, Arrests

(Updated) Police made 13 arrests as they evicted New England’s longest-standing anti-corporate ​“Occupy Wall Street” outpost — this time before payloaders moved in.

It took police about a half hour to clear the area of protesters Wednesday morning.

A police dog trained to detect hazardous materials was sniffing around the last tent shortly before 9 a.m., after the last protesters were carried away. That was to prepare the way for public works crews to start cleaning up the area, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman.

The police dog turned up a homeless man sleeping inside a tent. He had slept through all the commotion. Police woke him up; he left the scene, confused. ​“He apologized for oversleeping,” said Police Chief Dean Esserman.

Then five firefighters carrying masks and wearing haz-mat suits, blue gloves, and yellow boots entered the area. They carried long probes and a Geiger counter. One firefighter recovered three small propane canisters.

Police formed a line at 9:10 a.m. and ordered remaining protesters to clear a broader swath of the Green to make room for public-works equipment. The line of cops advanced south; protesters began wandering away. The officers taped off the southwest entrance to the park; a dozen protesters moved to the sidewalk on Chapel Street, where they continued to half-heartedly heckle police. Meanwhile, around 9:30 a.m., an 18-wheeler pulled into the area, followed by two payloaders, so the clean-up could begin.

Police moved in on the upper Green spot around 8 a.m. Wednesday, as expected, acting on a court ruling that the city can now dismantle the protest encampment that has been up since mid-October.

Groups of up to six officers at a time carried each protester to a white police bus parked on College Street.

“Whose Green?” protesters chanted as they linked arms around a small tent and police began carrying them out one by one. ​“Our Green!”

“We are the 99 percent!”

Called out another protester: ​“Hitler would be proud!”

As Officer Hartman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, observed the scene, one protester called him a ​“Nazi.”

After they carted away the last of the passive resisters, police also arrested Josh Heltke, one of the original Occupy organizers. He didn’t participate in the civil disobedience; rather he taunted police through a bullhorn, comparing them to Nazis, as they carried people away. Afterwards, police arrested him after he walked through a closed-off area. Heltke denied any wrongdoing, saying he was just going to get some water.

Police arrested 13 people in all on disorderly conduct charges, according to Chief Esserman. They also charged some of them with interfering with police.

At 8:07 a.m., Esserman ordered reporters to leave the immediate area of the evacuation, to a press and public viewing line that was set up south of the camp, beyond a boundary established with yellow police tape.

At 8:15 a.m., officers began removing a ring of protesters sitting around a tent with their arms locked.

“Fascists!” one protester yelled.

“You’re fucking assholes! You’re pigs!” one protester shouted — a shift from the mood of the encampment for much of its six-month existence, when protesters worked closely with officers they called part of the ​“99 percent” of Americans their movement claimed to represent.

The Lead-Up

At 7:50 a.m., right before the expected eviction, the protesters emerged from a final strategy session in their ​“Russia” tent. They carried a yellow and purple Marmot two-person tent filled with helium balloons and topped with more balloons: two shaped as champagne bottles and five reading ​“Happy Birthday.” It immediately got stuck in a tree; the protesters grabbed a PVC pipe to try to get it down.

A dusty expanse of formerly grassy parkland (pictured) stood revealed as the camp was largely dismantled. Police had College Street blocked off to prepare for an operation to remove the remaining protesters.

Officials set up a less chaotic scene than they did last week when they began an eviction that a federal judge aborted with a last-minute stay. At that time, dozens of tents were still standing along with a fortified camp. City officials — in what now is generally acknowledged as a tactical blunder — sent both cops and public works crews and heavy equipment to the scene at once.

This time, the Occupiers largely dismantled their camp in the wake of a failed final attempt in federal appeals court Tuesday to get a stay against eviction. (Read about that here.) The central kitchen tent was gone. Pallets were stacked up there instead. Big piles of collected tarps and milk crates sat in other areas.

This time, the Occupiers acknowledged they were leaving, although some remained for a final civil-disobedience arrest. One Occupier, Don Montano, once again brought along a ​“donut trap” to taunt police officers.

Police Chief Esserman said public works and parks crews wouldn’t show up until after the protesters’ removal to start cleaning up and reseeding the grass.

Last week, protesters climbed on the heavy equipment as part of their protest, making the scene more chaotic and difficult to police.