Occupy LA Shut Down: Mayor Orders Camp Closed By Monday

City Hall Park, the site of the 56-day Occupy LA encampment, will be closed at 12:01 a.m. Monday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced today, saying it is time for the protest to move into its next phase.

Officers with the General Services Police Department, the city's enforcement agency in city parks, will walk through the encampment handing out bilingual fliers and giving verbal notice of the closure, Villaraigosa announced at a City Hall news conference.

Los Angeles County social workers will also visit the encampment, informing people of available social services, Villaraigosa said.

Meanwhile, Occupy LA protesters were defiant Friday afternoon. Crowds gathered to chant on the City Hall lawn during the mayor's news conference in his pressroom, and demonstrators took to Twitter to defy the mayor's message and ask supporters to bombard Villaraigosa's office with phone calls of support for the movement.

"Occupy LA has brought needed attention to the growing disparities in our country and I look forward to its ongoing efforts to build an economy that works for everyone," Villaraigosa said.

"As we continue to respect the exercise of everyone's First Amendment rights in our Civic Center and throughout Los Angeles, City Hall Park is temporarily closing out of concern for the public safety implications of a long- term encampment."

Protester Jeremy Rothe-Kuschel repeatedly interrupted the mayor's nearly 40-minute news conference, accusing him of lying about his efforts to work with Occupy L.A. "You've never addressed the General Assembly. Do not lie to us please," Rothe-Kuschel yelled.

Villaraigosa and Beck allowed Rothe-Kuschel to remain throughout the news conference despite the repeated interruptions, and allowed him to complete each of his statements.

Occupy Los Angeles rejected a proposal to leave City Hall, instead issuing a list of demands to the mayor and City Council.

"We reject outright the city's attempts to lure us out of City Hall and into negotiations by offering us nebulous, non-transparent and unconfirmed offers, which fail to even begin to address our local grievances," protesters said in a letter posted on the movement's website Thursday.

Pressed about whether police would make arrests, Villaraigosa said, "We are prepared to make arrests, but that's not our intention."

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, who joined the mayor during the news conference, stressed that his officers would give campers enough time to move their things. He declined to give specifics about when police would begin forcibly removing defiant protesters who refuse to leave.

"I want to be flexible. I want to make sure that I have given everybody the most reasonable opportunity possible to leave peacefully," Beck said.

"It took a couple of hours to put up these tents. It only takes a couple hours to take them down," Villaraigosa said.

Protesters who met with city officials reported early this week that the mayor's deputy chief of staff, Matt Szabo, offered to lease Occupy L.A. 10,000 square feet of office space in the Los Angeles Mall for $1 per year and to secure farmland for protesters to garden.

Villaraigosa denied making such an offer.

"It was not our proposal," Villaraigosa said. "It was something that was proposed. I said that I couldn't accept it. That didn't mean that we didn't want to provide an alternative that would help to sustain the ideas that these people are shedding a light on."

The Occupy LA encampment began Oct. 1 when protesters erected about 40 tents on the north lawn of City Hall Park. For the first few days, protesters were forced to move tents off the lawn at night. After Villaraigosa gave orders not to enforce laws that ban people from camping in city parks at night, the encampment grew about 10 times.

There were 465 tents on the lawn today, according to General Services Police Department officers.

Following the closure, city officials will continue to "work humanely" with Occupy LA and others in the park to help them comply with the closure, Villaraigosa said.

Fifty shelter beds will be made available Monday for homeless members of the Occupy LA encampment, Villaraigosa said.

Protester Alex Recinos, 44, said he plans to ignore the park closure. "How can they close the park if we're here," said Recinos, who has a tent adjacent to the south steps of City Hall. "I'm willing to be arrested if the taxpayers are willing to pay for damages to my tent and my solar panel, which I'm here to show people how to use."

"Let us take over the welfare for the people in Los Angeles, and let this be a model city around the world," Recinos added.

City Councilman Bernard Parks' chief of staff criticized the mayor's handling of Occupy LA, saying it set a bad precedent.

"Say the Aryan Nation showed up tomorrow and said we're going to take over the south lawn of City Hall, and we're going to protest there for seven weeks. What do we tell them," said Bernard Parks, Jr., the councilman's son and top adviser.

Parks, Jr. also expressed frustration with the cost of supporting the movement, including overtime fees for policing the encampment and fixing damage to the lawn's sprinkler system and grass. "The councilman totally understands the need, desire, and right to protest, but it has to be done with some consideration of the rest of the people who live in the city," Parks, Jr. said. "In case no one noticed, there's a bit of a budget crisis in this city."