Enterprise Services director Joyce Turner signed an order Thursday morning asking campers to remove tents, shelters, structures and other personal effects. Items that are left will be seized, and campers will have 15 days to pick them up, the order states. It wasn't clear early this morning when the items will be seized.
The move came more than a month after campers were asked Nov. 11 to leave voluntarily.
Public-safety and sanitary concerns are driving the state to act now, General Administration spokesman Steve Valandra said. He cited more incidents of drug use, confrontations and police responses. People have been urinating and defecating on the park, and there are needles strewn about, Valandra said.
What originally started out as a free-speech activity has turned into something else, he said.
It is a coincidence that campers were asked to leave after the special legislative session ended, he said.
He couldnt say exactly what will happen, or when, if the campers dont leave by the deadline. But he added later that therell be some leeway to the 12:01 deadline, and a staffer indicated there might be nothing left to remove.
People are packing stuff up and moving on, he said.
Demonstrators said in a statement that they planned to meet two hours before the deadline for camp defense and witness.
Occupy Olympia did not create the problems faced at camp, it said. These are the same problems faced in communities around the country.
About 60 tents remained at the camp Thursday afternoon, but that number dwindled as the day wore on. Camper Jc Romero vowed to stay.
Gundermann said troopers gave occupants plenty of time to leave the camp, and were not met with resistance although they had been prepared to make arrests.
"If that's how they wanted to make their statement, be arrested, we would have done that," he said. "But fortunately it didn't come to that. Everybody went peacefully and it worked out well."
Dozens of troopers swept through the park, removing tents and erecting a temporary fence to keep protestors from returning.
Some protestors, however, tried to move across the street into a vacant building. Olympia police moved in momentarily, but eventually protestors left that location peacefully as well.
Spokeswoman Elinor Paulus says she expects a couple of dozen people who remain in the park they have occupied since mid-October to be evicted. The state Department of Enterprise Services posted eviction notices at the camp Thursday, citing concerns with drug use and graffiti.
Paulus says about three dozen people moved into the two-story building that once service as housing authority offices but was bought by a developer who had planned a high-rise condo tower.
She says it's tentatively named in memory of the Olympia activist killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza.
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