Protesters Kicked Out of Zuccotti Park

Northeast Queens leaders and activists said they believed that Occupy Wall Street should have the right to protest at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, but they were split on Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to prevent the protesters from sleeping at the site.

Last night, police descended on the park, where protesters have been camping out for two months, around 1 a.m.

Councilman Mark Weprin, D-Oakland Gardens, said he did not think the mayor's method of removing protesters from the park was the most effective.

"It's unfortunate that the police felt the need to come in like a SWAT team and clear them out," he said. "Certainly the Occupy Wall Street protesters have a stronge message out there in that they want to call attention to the disparity between wealthy and poor in this country. I certainly think they have a right to protest. I don't think it's the best way to come in the middle of the night like it's a commando raid."

Steve Behar, a Bayside political activist, blasted the mayor’s decision.

“It’s a shame that Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have used the NYPD as a tool of the 1 percent so that the 99 percent of us cannot exercise our constitutional rights,” he said.

Jerry Emerson, owner of Douglaston's Peak Bicycle Pro Shop, said he supported Occupy Wall Street's right to protest at the park, but not to sleep there.

"I think they should be able to go there every day and do what they gotta do," he said. "But I'm glad the mayor kicked them out. I don't think they had the right to take it over. It looked like the apocalypse happened there."

Police forced protesters to remove their tents, sleeping bags and other gear, but told them they could return without their makeshift domiciles once the city’s Department of Sanitation had cleaned the grounds.

“Protesters have had two months to occupy the park with tents and sleeping bags,” Bloomberg said Tuesday. “Now, they will have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments.”

The mayor said he was booting the protesters from the park because he believed they posed a fire safety hazard and that people were being prevented from using the park for recreational purposes.

“Unfortunately, the park was becoming a place where people came not to protest, but rather to break laws and, in some cases, to harm others,” the mayor said. “No right is absolute and with every right comes responsibilities. The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out, but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others.”

The New York Times reported that as many as 190 protesters had been arrested, but that 50 had been let back into the park when officials received word of a temporary restraining order by lawyers for Occupy Wall Street.