Mayor Bloomberg offered a new rationale today for why he waited two months to boot the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park, saying the courts might not have upheld an earlier eviction.
“I think you have to give people time to express themselves,” the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show.
“If you tried to do it earlier, it’s not clear to me that the courts would have permitted it. In Boston, I think they were stopped from taking the tents down by the courts. The courts want to be convinced that you are protecting people’s First Amendment rights and that the argument that there is a safety hazard is a legitimate one. In this case we convinced the judge of both.”
A Boston judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring the city to engage in mediation before acting against protesters in its financial district.
The mayor didn’t explain why he was prepared to sweep the private park clean a month ago, until owner Brookfield Properties revoked its request for a clean-up under pressure from local elected officials.
Hours after the overnight raid on Zuccotti after midnight Monday, mayoral aides claimed the administration acted because an emergency medical technician had been injured a week earlier trying to tend to a mentally disturbed activist within the park.
Bloomberg began is radio show by shrugging off the disruptions caused by the anti-greed movement.
“Was something going on this week?” he asked jokingly.
