LOS ANGELES — For now, Wall Street protesters camped out on the Los Angeles City Hall lawn still have their tent city after defying a deadline to pack up and clear out. “Still occupied,” read the sign of a protester up in a tree.

Hours after emerging from a possible confrontation with police largely unscathed Monday, demonstrators turned to the federal courts to keep officers away.

They are arguing that the City Council had passed a resolution in support of Occupy Los Angeles and that the city’s mayor and police did not have the authority to evict them.

Until there is a decision, the tent city’s inhabitants are left to wonder if and when police will push them out – and if there will be the kind of violence that has engulfed evictions in other cities when they do.

City officials said they’ll move in on the camp only when conditions are safest – not just for protesters and officers, but also the roughly 100 homeless people who had joined the encampment.

“There is no concrete deadline,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said after hundreds of officers withdrew without moving in on the nearly two-month-old camp.

The effort should come “with as little drama as possible,” Beck told reporters.

Police and protesters have clashed elsewhere in recent weeks, most notably in Oakland, Calif., as officers cleared away camps officials say have grown more dangerous for public health and safety.

Marine Corps veteran Scott Olsen, who was struck in the head during an Oct. 25 clash between police and Occupy Oakland protesters, said in his first interview since being injured that he still has trouble speaking but expects to recover completely.

In a video interview posted Monday on Indybay.org, Olsen said he couldn’t speak at all in the days after his skull was fractured. “I was not doing good. But now I’m doing a lot better,” he said.

Like Los Angeles, Philadelphia officials imposed their own deadline for protesters to move to make way for a construction project. On Monday, however, the camp was still standing.

 

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