NYC's top cop: Occupy eviction was restrained

NEW YORK - New York's police commissioner defended how officers handled themselves in the overnight mass eviction from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park.

Ray Kelly said about 200 people were arrested in the sweep, including dozens of people who tried to resist eviction by linking arms in a tight circle at the center of the park. Kelly said police "showed an awful lot of restraint," with many protesters taunting officers or "calling them names."

Kelly said officers gave the crowd 45 minutes to retrieve their belongings before starting to dismantle tents, and let people leave voluntarily until around 3:30 a.m., when they moved in to make mass arrests.

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The overnight arrests included one city councilman. Several journalists have also been arrested, including one Associated Press writer and an AP photographer who were covering a lower Manhattan protest that followed this morning's eviction.

Hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided the encampment, evicted hundreds of demonstrators and demolished the tent city that was the epicenter of a movement protesting what participants call corporate greed and economic inequality.

The police action began around 1 a.m. and lasted several hours as officers with batons and plastic shields pushed the protesters from their base.

In contrast to the scene weeks ago in Oakland, where a similar eviction turned chaotic and violent, the police action was comparatively orderly. But it wasn't entirely bloodless.

"The cops hit my legs with a baton," said demonstrator Max Luisdaniel Santos, 31, an unemployed construction worker, pulling up his pants to show some swollen scars on his calf. "Then they shoved my face into the ground."

He pulled open his cheek to show where his teeth had cut into the flesh as he hit the stone paving.

"I was bleeding profusely. They shoved a lot of people's faces into the ground," Santos said as he stood near the park Tuesday morning, looking shaken. He said he lost his shoes in the scuffle, but wasn't arrested.

One person was taken to a hospital for evaluation because of breathing problems.

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who has been supportive of the Occupy movement, was among those arrested outside of the park. Kelly said he was trying to get through police lines to reach the protesters. Several journalists were detained or manhandled by police while trying to cover the eviction.

Protesters were able to grab about $2,500 in cash that was at the plaza before police kicked them out, said Pete Dutro, who is in charge of the New York City movement's finances.

"We got all the dough," Dutro said. "It's on my person."