Minneapolis police used buckets of water and a bulldozer to break up a Black Lives Matter encampment outside the police department Thursday.

Minneapolis police arrested eight people, seven for refusing to obey officers’ order to leave and one for trespassing. Police used heavy equipment to remove tents and other items that collected since protesters began occupying there, Fox9 reports. Police say the occupation is costing the department hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay.

They gave the protesters a 10 minute warning before moving in, putting out the small fires and cleaning up tents.

“I do want to make notice to future protests … we will continue to support and facilitate your first amendment rights and freedom of speech, but we also support and enforce the ordinances of the city of Minneapolis and the laws of the state of Minnesota,” Chief Janeé Harteau said in a press conference Thursday. “And that includes such things as putting up tents, fires, and blocking streets for extended periods of time and not allowing folks to get through. We will not allow structures or what we see as the beginning of an occupation.”

Black Lives Matter activists say Jamar Clark, an unarmed black 24 year old, was handcuffed when fatally shot. They have been marching in the streets and blocking police facilities since Nov. 15. The shooting occurred when police responded to a report of an assault just before 1 a.m. Police say when they arrived there was a man interfering with paramedics who were treating the man who had been assaulted. There was a struggle and one fatal shot fired from an officer.

State and federal investigators are currently looking into the death.

“Once time had gone by and we knew the occupation would not end on its own, we certainly had been doing extensive monitoring of the protests and looking at time of day, what would be the best time for everyone involved and when we had the best resources,” Harteau says in the press conference. “So it was very strategic for when we did it with those things in mind. Public safety is our number one priority.”

This isn’t the first reaction to protests that has drawn criticism. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton requested the Department of Justice conduct a review of the Minneapolis police department’s actions during previous protests after police used pepper spray on crowd that had thrown bricks and bottles at police.

“We have been saying for a significant amount of time that Minneapolis is one bullet away from Ferguson,” Jason Sole, chair of the Minneapolis NAACP’s criminal justice committee, told Minnesota Public Radio News after the Clark’s shooting. “That bullet was fired last night. We want justice immediately.”

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