More than 100 police officers — some on horseback, others in yellow hazardous materials suits — arrived at the square two blocks from the White House at 6 a.m. Saturday after warning the protesters on Monday that camping in the federal space is illegal.  The police said the tents must be cleared of anything that indicated camping, including bedding, pillows and cooking equipment. On Saturday, police cordoned sections of the park with metal crowd-control barricades as teams of officers moved from quadrant to quadrant inspecting each tent. By noon, the southeast quadrant had been swept clean.  "You can't set up household in the park," said Sgt. David Schlosser, spokesman for the Park Police.  But Schlosser said the protesters, who began the occupation Oct. 1, can remain day and night.  "This is not an eviction," he said. "We are doing this in segments so they can remain in the park and exercise their First Amendment rights."  The Park Police manage thousands of protests each year and have no objection to protests that last years or even decades, Schlosser said, citing a woman who maintained her protest vigil across the street from the White House for 30 years. The Washington demonstration is among the last of the Occupy protests to survive police and city crackdowns.  "We're principally here for health concerns," he said. "There's a lot of generally unhygienic things we're finding."  Police removed urine-soaked bedding material, bottles of urine and dead rats from the park on Saturday, Schlosser said. Police also arrested four people early Saturday morning for disobeying a lawful order when they refused to move away from the statue of Gen. James McPherson at the center of the square, he said. Police arrested two others for crossing a police line.  James Davis, 29, of Charlotte, N.C., who has been living in the park since Jan. 17, said the police had ripped open tents and removed even those that had been stripped bare of possessions.  "This is a mass eviction," Davis said. "The people will not stand idly by while our First Amendment rights are being taken away in the nation's capital."  The protesters chanted throughout the police action.  "I want my son, Gavin, to have the future I've been denied," Davis shouted to the crowd.  Davis, a former foster child whose chronic homelessness has led to several arrests in North Carolina, said he's participating in the protest, first in Charlotte and then in Washington, to raise awareness of social and economic injustice engendered by corrupt politicians.  "They stare at us from the top of their ivory towers," Davis said.  Lacy MacAuley, 33, of Washington, D.C., who had erected a tent in the park and stayed there overnight early in the protest before ceding it to another protester, shouted to police that she expected to get her tent back.  "I think they're cleaning the wrong house," MacAuley said. "They should be cleaning out these offices on K Street, the White House and freaking Congress. It's sad."
Dozens of U.S. Park Police in riot gear and on horseback converged on one of the nation's last remaining Occupy sites early Saturday.