At approximately 2 a.m. Thursday, Rochester police officers walked into Washington Square Park and asked a group of seven Occupiers for identification. That much is not in dispute.

But several other details about the evening are. Occupy Rochester and its allies say the police were harassing the protesters, but city and police officials say the officers were just doing their job.

According to the account from Occupiers at the park, as relayed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, officers demanded IDs from the Occupiers, woke up sleeping protestors to demand their IDs, and asked to search their tents.

The officers also said police would be back nightly between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. to conduct ID checks and searches, and that they were acting under orders, according to the accounts.

"There is no good reason for police to be harassing peaceful protesters in the dead of night," KaeLyn Rich, director of the Genesee Valley chapter of the NYCLU, said in a statement. "It flies in the face of both the First Amendment and the agreement between the city and Occupy Rochester that allows the demonstrators to camp in the park."

But Police Chief James Sheppard says that the officers were routine patrol and, at approximately 2 a.m., they saw seven people in Washington Square Park. Typically there haven't been people milling about at that time, Sheppard says. That was unusual, so officers went to check the situation out, he says. During that check, they asked for identification.

Sheppard said he believes that the officers informed the Occupiers that the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift would be checking the park on a regular basis, much as officers try to do with other public areas. He said ID checks wouldn't be part of that. He said officers "assessed" the park during last night's overnight shift, but that the officers didn't "stop and engage."

"I am disappointed that individuals that claim they have a right to assemble in a public place believe that same space is their private domain," Sheppard said in an e-mail.

But there's a reason why the incident may alarm Occupiers, their supporters, and free-speech advocates. Across the state and the country, police have been raiding and breaking up Occupy encampments. Early Thursday morning, while police were doing ID checks of Occupy Rochester protestors, Buffalo police were evicting Occupy Buffalo. (Our fellow alt, Artvoice, has a dispatch from one of the Buffalo Occupiers.)

In recent days, Occupy groups in other cities and states have either been evicted or received notice of impending eviction. The evicted groups have typically faced police in riot gear, while some cities have also brought in heavy equipment to clear the sites. Buffalo brought in bulldozers and dump trucks Thursday morning.

Occupy Rochester has been discussing a new agreement with the city. Mayor Tom Richards, however, says he wants to know when the protestors will end the occupation. In an interview late last month, Richards said that this spring the city needs to clean up the park and make it available to everybody.

"We've got to come to some understanding about when they're going to leave and how," Richards said. "And it seems to me it'd be better if they made up their own mind about that, and we're going to give them a chance to do that."