More arrests are coming for the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Mayor Bloomberg announced this morning that the city is going to take a hard line with demonstrators making camp in Lower Manhattan after going easy on the throngs for weeks.
“We will start enforcing that more,” he said of rules requiring permits for marches and assemblies.
FLA. BANKER’S WIFE LEFT FAMILY TO JOIN WALL ST. PROTESTERS
The mayor’s comments came during his weekly appearance on John Gambling’s show on WOR-AM.
While crediting the protesters for “generally obeying the law” and being largely “peaceful,” Bloomberg said he was concerned the continued demonstration in interfering with other New Yorkers’ rights to enjoy their property and the city.
“We’ll eventually have to work something out here,” Bloomberg said.
The mayor did not specify what type of crackdown is coming or when it would begin. He also did not mention recent instances where the NYPD have already taken a hard line, including a widely publicized incident in which a cop pepper-sprayed a protester and mass arrests two weeks ago on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The mayor’s office did not have an explanation for the meaning of Bloomberg’s threat.
Though maintaining a home base at Zuccotti Park downtown, protesters have taken their movement to points throughout the city, including Washington Square Park, City Hall and a tour of uptown buildings where some of the city’s richest business people live.
In a statement, OWS’s media coordinator Thorin Caristo said, “His inability to create a clear and definitive opinion or position on OWS just shows he’s being tossed around like a bird in a storm. We all know what that storm is, that storm is the growing concern in the higher factions of Wall Street, that this movement might actually be making a difference.
“The mayor’s statements sound hardline and I have no doubt he may actually try to enforce those. But we all know that every time excessive police force is used in this situation the movement grows exponentially.”