Occupy Wall Street showdown looms between protesters and NYPD cops over cleaning of Zuccotti Park 
 
 Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty A member of the NYPD looks over demonstrators with 'Occupy Wall Street' protest at Zuccotti Park before they start cleaning up their belongings Thursday. 
 
 A showdown loomed Friday morning between Occupy Wall Street and the NYPD after protesters vowed to defy orders to leave Zuccotti Park so it can be cleaned. 
 
 The city said protesters could return to the park after the cleanup - but without the sleeping bags, tents and tarps that have made their 28-day sit-in possible. 
 
 "We see this as a pretext to shut the occupation down," protester Amin Husain said. 
 
 Occupy Wall Street said it would resist any attempt by the city or the owners of the park to shift protesters from the public plaza where they have camped since Sept. 17. 
 
 "They will not foreclose our home!" Husain shouted. "This is an occupation, not a permitted picnic. We won't allow them to come in." 
 
 They geared up for a confrontation, calling on supporters to mobilize at 6 a.m. "to defend the occupation from eviction." 
 
 They planned to link arms and fortify the park perimeter with a human chain, forcing mass arrests if the cleanup goes forward. 
 
 Brookfield Properties, which owns the park but must legally allow 24-hour public access, said conditions "have deteriorated to unsanitary and unsafe levels" and said it must power wash the plaza today. 
 
 The NYPD said if Brookfield complains that people are interfering with the company's efforts to clean the park, cops will start making arrests. 
 
 City Hall assured the protesters they could return to the park after the cleanup and stay as long as they liked - as long as they didn't break the law. 
 
 But Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the NYPD would start enforcing Brookfield's rules against camping gear. 
 
 "The equipment, sleeping bags - that sort of thing will not be able to be brought back into the park," Kelly said. 
 
 A group of city pols rallied last night, calling on Mayor Bloomberg to reconsider what they called his "eviction notice" and warning him that the world was watching Zuccotti Park. 
 
 "This is how revolutions start," said Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron. "Mr. Mayor? You want to clean up something? Clean up these crooks on Wall Street!" 
 
 On Twitter, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons offered to "pay for the cleanup of Zuccotti Park to avoid confrontation." 
 
 Mass arrests are liable to simply fuel Occupy Wall Street: the rag-tag movement's biggest boosts in the past month have come from the sympathy and publicity generated by what protesters described as heavy-handed police tactics. 
 
 To counter claims that the park is unsanitary, Occupy Wall Street used brooms and bleach to clean it up themselves beginning yesterday. 
 
 The crowd voted to spend $3,000 from their $150,000 donation fund on power washers, gardening supplies and professional sanitation workers. 
 
 The rented power washers proved to be no use since the park has no water supply. 
 
 With Rocco Parascandola, John Doyle and Erin Einhorn 
 
 hkennedy@nydailynews.com ||||| Hundreds of police officers in riot gear evicted dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters early Tuesday from the park that has become the epicenter of the worldwide movement protesting corporate greed. 
 
 Trash is piled high near Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street's longtime encampment in New York, during the cleanup effort early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed out notices... (Associated Press) 
 
 An Occupy Wall Street protestor is arrested during a march on Broadway, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, in New York, after police ordered demonstrators to leave their encampment in Zuccotti Park. At about 1 a.m.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Demonstrators clash with police after being ordered to leave the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in New York on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. Police handed out notices earlier from the park's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Occupy Wall Street protesters are pushed by police near the encampment at Zuccotti Park in New York, early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed out notices from the park's owner,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Occupy Wall Street protesters clash with police at Zuccotti Park after being ordered to leave their longtime encampment in New York, early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed... (Associated Press) 
 
 Police officers clean up the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in New York after ordering protesters to leave, early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed out notices... (Associated Press) 
 
 Police officers disperse Occupy Wall Street protesters near the encampment at Zuccotti Park in New York, early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed out notices from the park's... (Associated Press) 
 
 About 70 people were arrested, including some who chained themselves together, while officers cleared Zuccotti Park so that sanitation crews could clean it. 
 
 Police in riot gear filled the streets, car lights flashing and sirens blaring. Protesters, some of whom shouted angrily at police, began marching to two locations in Lower Manhattan where they planned to hold rallies. 
 
 Protesters at the two-month-old encampment were told they could come back after the cleaning, but under new tougher rules, including no tents, sleeping bags or tarps, which would effectively put an end to the encampment if enforced. 
 
 Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement Tuesday that the evacuation was conducted in the middle of the night "to reduce the risk of confrontation in the park, and to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighborhood." 
 
 He said after the cleaning, protesters would be allowed to return but "must follow all park rules." 
 
 "The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day," Bloomberg said. "Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with, as the park has been taken over by protesters, making it unavailable to anyone else." 
 
 Concerns about health and safety issues at Occupy Wall Street camps around the United States have intensified, and protesters have been ordered to take down their shelters, adhere to curfews and relocate so that parks can be cleaned. 
 
 At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, New York City police handed out notices from Brookfield Office Properties, owner of Zuccotti Park, and the city saying that the park had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous. Protesters were told they could return in several hours, but without sleeping bags, tarps or tents. 
 
 Hundreds of former Zuccotti Park residents and their supporters were marching along Lower Manhattan before dawn Tuesday and threatened to block Broadway during the morning rush hour. Others gathered near Foley Square, just blocks from Zuccotti Park, where they can't get arrested. 
 
 Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said the park had been cleared by 4:30 a.m. and that about 70 people who'd been inside it had been arrested, including a group who chained themselves together. One person was taken to a local hospital for evaluation because of breathing problems. 
 
 Some protesters refused to leave the park, but many left peacefully. 
 
 Ben Hamilton, 29, said he was arrested "and I was just trying to get away" from the fray. 
 
 Rabbi Chaim Gruber, an Occupy Wall Street member, said police officers were clearing the streets near Zuccotti Park. 
 
 "The police are forming a human shield, and are pushing everyone away," he said. 
 
 Hundreds of police officers surrounded the park in riot gear with plastic shields across their faces, holding plastic shields and batons which were used on some cases on protesters. 
 
 Police also came armed with klieg lights, which they used to flood the park, and bull horns to announce that everyone had to clear out. 
 
 Jake Rozak, another protester, said police "had their pepper spray out and were ready to use it." 
 
 Notices given to the protesters said the park "poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city's first responders and the surrounding community." 
 
 It said that tents, sleeping bags and other items had to be removed because "the storage of these materials at this location is not allowed." Anything left behind would be taken away, the notices said, giving an address at a sanitation department building where items could be picked up. 
 
 Alex Hall, 21, of Brooklyn, said police walked into the park "stepping on tents and ripping them out." 
 
 Before dawn, sanitation plows and trucks were lined up on Broadway ready to roll into the park and remove what was left of the debris. 
 
 On Monday, a small group of demonstrators, including local residents and merchants, protested at City Hall. In recent weeks, they have urged the mayor to clear out the park because of its negative impact on the neighborhood and small businesses. 
 
 Occupy encampments have come under fire around the country as local officials and residents have complained about possible health hazards and ongoing inhabitation of parks and other public spaces. 
 
 Anti-Wall Street activists intend to converge at the University of California, Berkeley on Tuesday for a day of protests and another attempt to set up an Occupy Cal camp, less than a week after police arrested dozens of protesters who tried to pitch tents on campus. 
 
 The Berkeley protesters will be joined by Occupy Oakland activists who said they would march to the UC campus in the afternoon. Police cleared the tent city in front of Oakland City Hall before dawn Monday and arrested more than 50 people amid complaints about safety, sanitation and drug use. ||||| On Thursday evening, a couple dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park grabbed brooms and buckets and set about sweeping up the site. For the last two days, they had begun to work harder than usual to keep the park clean and attractive, putting their brooms to work, filling up buckets of water at nearby restaurants and even, according to one protester, planting flowers. 
 
 Protesters say they are cleaning the park so that the city doesn't have to do so. On Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Zuccotti Park would be closed temporarily at the end of the week so that sanitation workers could clean it, which they had not done since the protests began. Many of the protesters said they saw this as a ploy to get them out of the park permanently, and their suspicions were further intensified when Ray Kelly, the commissioner of the NYPD, said Thursday that they would not be able to bring back their sleeping bags and other items after leaving. The city's clean-up is scheduled for 7:00 a.m. Friday, and many of the protesters have vowed to resist any attempt at evacuation. 
 
 In a letter sent to Kelly on Tuesday, Richard B. Clark, the chief executive of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns the park, wrote, "After weeks of occupation, conditions at the park have deteriorated to unsanitary and unsafe levels." 
 
 On behalf of the protestors, a group of New York civil liberties lawyers issued a letter to Clark today in which they wrote that a sanitation group at the site has been addressing the concerns raised in Clark's letter "all along" and has "committed itself to carrying out a thorough and complete cleaning" as an extra measure. 
 
 "Trash has consistently been bagged and hauled to established collection points and recycling rules have been strictly adhered to," they wrote, adding that the sanitation group "typically has had between one and fifteen people sweeping the Park with brooms at any time." 
 
 The lawyers concluded their letter with an offer to meet to resolve the controversy. 
 
 Brendan Burke, a protester who lives in Brooklyn, said that he runs "patrols" several times each day, pressing people to keep their spaces clean. Not everyone complies, he said, but overall, the group has been more orderly and respectful than not. Because this is New York, he found it fitting to add that he had yet to see a rat. 
 
 At 6:00 p.m. Thursday, while protesters began the cleaning effort, a group of about 20 New York council members and state senators expressed their support of the protesters at a press conference in the plaza across the street from the park. They included Margaret Chin, the city council member whose district includes Wall Street. "I call on the mayor to do everything you can to make sure the peaceful demonstrations continue," she said. 
 
 Jumaane Williams, a council member from Brooklyn, addressed the mayor directly. "Hopefully you'll be remembered for something other than dismantling democracy in this city." He finished his speech with a flourish, leading the crowd in a chorus of a chant that has reverberated through the area for weeks: "All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street." 
 
 About an hour after the press conference ended, there was a tense stand-off between police and protesters on Wall Street outside of the restaurant Cipriani. A scrum of protesters had marched down to the restaurant because they'd heard that the mayor would be making an appearance at a gala there. They gathered across the street from the restaurant, shouting slogans, while a line of police stood in front of them, blocking the restaurant's entrance. They left after the police threatened to arrest them. 
 
 Angela Doyle, the executive vice president of 1199SEIU, a local health care workers' union, said that she had been inside the restaurant when the mayor presented an award. When the room rose to give him a standing ovation, she said, two tables of union representatives "sat on their hands." 
 
 When she heard that there were protesters outside, she said, she decided to come take a look. The union's goals are "completely congruous" with those of the protesters, she said. 
 
 Standing outside the restaurant, smoking a cigarette, she said she was thinking about reaching out to her friends in the sanitation union to see if she could interest any of them in volunteering to help the protesters with the clean-up. Like the protesters, she was suspicious of the mayor's intentions. "If sanitation is his concern, " she said, "I could show him some neighborhoods in the Bronx."
– Protesters in the park at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration were bracing for a showdown with police this morning, but they appear to have been granted a reprieve. The protesters had vowed to defy orders to leave Zuccotti Park by 6am so it could be cleaned. The city had said protesters could return after that cleaning—but without the sleeping bags and other gear that has made a 27-day sit-in possible, the New York Daily News reports. Dozens of protesters with brooms and buckets began a major park clean-up last night, with some even planting flowers, reports the Huffington Post. Did their efforts work? Maybe: NYC's deputy mayor announced this morning that the cleaning has been postponed. According to a statement from him, the park's owner "believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation." Activists viewed the order to leave the park as an attempt to shut down the protests; Capital Tonight calls the postponement a victory for the protesters.