Todd Heisler/The New York Times  Hours after being evicted by the police, protesters returned to Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, without tents and sleeping bags. More Photos »  Emergency-service trucks rumbled up Broadway to positions on two sides of Zuccotti Park. Powerful klieg lights blinked on, illuminating about 220 protesters in tents and sleeping bags. The one-square-block plaza was as bright as day. But it was only 1 a.m.  Voices of the police, booming from loudspeakers, echoed through the financial district. Officers swept through the park, picking their way around tents and over sleeping bags, handing out leaflets. Dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “This is our home,” “Barricade!” and, in one case, “You’re stepping on my bed!”  But the message was clear: Occupy Wall Street’s two-month encampment was coming to a sudden end.  The eviction early Tuesday morning, which ended with the arrests of 140 bleary-eyed protesters who had not heeded the orders to clear out, capped two intense weeks in which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides tried but failed to negotiate with members of Occupy Wall Street. They concluded that the protesters were unwilling to negotiate and unable to address their encampment’s growing problems on their own.  On Tuesday evening, after a judge agreed that officials could ban tents and tarps, several hundred protesters without sleeping gear returned to the park in Lower Manhattan, began to meet and prepared for an uncertain future.  “I think everyone’s still in the processing mode,” said Nate Barchus, 23, a protester from Providence, R.I., who acknowledged feeling rage and disappointment. “This will be a catalyst. This reminds everyone who was occupying exactly why they were occupying.”  The predawn operation, overseen by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, followed a series of crackdowns by exasperated mayors across the country; many of them had initially tolerated the movement, which criticized the nation’s economic inequality, but then wearied as the encampments became increasingly disruptive.  Mr. Bloomberg’s order to clear out the encampment prompted criticism as well as praise. Some neighbors and business owners, glimpsing park pavement for the first time in weeks, seemed relieved, while various liberal politicians, labor leaders and civil libertarians denounced the move as an unjustified infringement on free speech.  There were “a number of people inside there, some of them reporters, that were detained just walking on the sidewalk,” said a council member, Ydanis Rodriguez, who was among those arrested two blocks from the park early Tuesday. Mr. Rodriguez was held until 8 p.m., when he emerged from a courthouse with scrapes on his hand and above his right eye, and a large scab on the left side of his face, and alleged that he was assaulted by a police officer. “This is not acceptable,” he said.  For the mayor, a champion of the First Amendment who made a fortune on Wall Street and defends its virtues, the decision was even more freighted: just a month ago, he announced that the city would clear the park for cleaning, but backed down after a chorus of political protest and an influx of new demonstrators.  On Monday, the city took extraordinary steps to keep its plan secret and preserve the element of surprise, leaving members of the mayor’s staff, local politicians and even police commanders in the dark. This time, there would be no warning.  The administration had tried to avoid such a confrontation with behind-the-scenes diplomacy.  After weeks of fruitlessly trying to talk to the protesters through intermediaries, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s top political aide, said he was thrilled when he received a call in mid-October from Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein of Central Synagogue in Midtown Manhattan. The rabbi, who is the chairman of the Partnership of Faith, an interreligious group of senior city clerics, had been approached by members of the demonstration’s “comfort working group” seeking the city’s permission to set up tents and portable toilets.  Mr. Wolfson agreed to a meeting immediately, but it took two weeks to arrange one with the demonstrators, the rabbi said.  On Oct. 31, Mr. Wolfson sat down in a carpeted conference room owned by Trinity Church across a table from five members of the protest, an imam and the rabbi looking on.  Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, James Barron, David W. Chen, Matt Flegenheimer, Joseph Goldstein, Thomas Kaplan, Sharon Otterman and Kate Taylor.
Several hundred Occupy demonstrators returned to Zuccotti Park, but a judgeâs ruling bans tents, tarps and staying overnight.