Politicians might like posturing when they support the "goals" of the OWS movement but when confronted with disease breeding campgrounds, assaults, murder, rape, and vandalism, even liberal mayors feel it's time to take action.

Police in several cities are now engaged in the delicate process of evicting the protestors while trying to avoid violence.

The LA Times:

As many as 200 anti-Wall Street protesters in Portland, Ore., headed for a showdown with police early Sunday after ignoring orders to abandon a city park encampment, and authorities elsewhere arrested nearly two dozen people as cities stepped up pressure against the demonstrators.

"We're going to sit-in and force them to arrest us," Jordan LeDoux, an Occupy Portland spokesman, said Saturday evening.

In Salt Lake City, police arrested 19 people Saturday when protesters refused to leave a park a day after a man was found dead inside his tent at the encampment. Police said he died of drug use and carbon monoxide.

About 150 people had been living in the camp for weeks, and police had ordered them to leave by the end of the day.

Authorities in Denver forced protesters to leave a downtown encampment and arrested four people for interfering with officers who removed illegally pitched tents, said police spokesman Sonny Jackson.

Jackson said police had advised protesters since Wednesday that their tents in Civic Center Park and on a nearby sidewalk were illegal.

In San Francisco, two officers were injured Saturday afternoon during a march by demonstrators, police said. One was slashed in the hand with a razor blade and the other sustained a cut on his cheek during separate incidents around 3:30 p.m. near the intersection of the Embarcadero and Broadway. They were treated and released at the scene, according to police spokesman Carlos Manfredi.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, site of the most supportive and liberal city administration of all the protest venues, Mayor Quan is apparently still dithering over whether to evict the squatters despite police issuing two eviction notices over the last couple of days. The weaker she looks, the more emboldened the OWS protestors act. Someone should write a textbook on how not to handle a situation like this using Quan's actions over the last month as an example.

Clearly, public health and safety are finally trumping the OWS theatrics. It appears that most encampments will be a memory in the next few days.