“We watch very carefully and they generally do not break the law,” Bloomberg said on MSNBC. “I would prefer that we open up the park and begin to let people come through. The park …is not necessarily designed for sleeping.”

However, Bloomberg indicated the protesters would be allowed to stay for now. Previously he has defended protesters’ First Amendment right to express themselves.

“They say, ‘We don’t know what we want but we want it now,'” he said. “But that’s just as good a way of saying it as anything. … They express it by camping out and yelling and and screaming.”

Bloomberg said he does not know if the protests are a “movement” because there is no leader. “It’s the same thing with the Tea Party,” he noted.