200 arrested as LAPD raids Occupy camp

POLICE in riot gear and biohazard suits removed anti-Wall Street activists from an encampment outside the Los Angeles City Hall, arresting an estimated 200 people.

Busloads of police closed in on the 8-week-old Occupy LA camp after midnight and declared the hundreds of protesters congregated on the lawn, sidewalks and streets around City Hall to be an unlawful assembly, ordering them to disperse or face arrest, in line with an eviction order from the mayor.

The LA encampment, which officials had tolerated for weeks even as other cities moved in to clear out similar compounds, was among the largest on the West Coast aligned with a 2-month-old Occupy Wall Street movement against economic inequality and alleged excesses of the US financial system.