NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Early Friday morning, under a looming forecast of unseasonable cold and snow, a cadre of firefighters and police officers swept through the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park, confiscating generators and gasoline cans that the city considered a safety hazard.

While the operation was notable for its lack of confrontation, it highlighted once again the uneven application of rules at the park, where its status as a privately owned public plaza has left the protesters' legal advisors scouring the law for potential arguments to combat any eviction efforts.

"There are a number of contingencies," said Samuel Cohen of the Law Offices of Wylie M. Stecklow, a member of the protest's working legal group. "There are literally dozens of excellent attorneys to try to figure out legally what the status of the space is, what the parameters are that the protesters can work within, and how best to sustain this unprecedented act of First Amendment expression. We've got a lot in our holster right now."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged that no one knows how the occupation of the park -- now entering its seventh week -- will end, though he said the status quo would continue "at the moment" as long as protesters did not break the law.

"What will happen down the road?" he said during his weekly radio show, without offering any predictions.

The answer to that question could very well lie inside a Manhattan courtroom, with a confusing backdrop of zoning regulations, First Amendment law and rules governing privately controlled public spaces.

'LOOKS LIKE THE CITY HAS BACKED OFF'

Unlike city parks, which have curfews, Zuccotti Park is open 24 hours a day. That condition was imposed in a deal with the city that allowed the developers to exceed certain zoning restrictions on a nearby office building.

Bloomberg and the city have taken the position that the park property's owner, Brookfield Office Properties, would have to make a complaint before police could consider evicting the protesters. Since Brookfield abandoned plans to clean the park and force protesters to leave two weeks ago, the company has remained silent.

"When it comes to the rules of conduct in the park, the city is taking the position that it's Brookfield's call," said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has urged city officials to respect Occupy's right to demonstrate. "It looks like the city has backed off and Brookfield has backed off."

Brookfield instituted new rules regarding the park's use soon after the protests began, including a ban on tents. But those regulations have not been enforced, with demonstrators erecting tents as the weather worsens, and Brookfield appears reluctant to ask the city to step in.

A Brookfield spokeswoman did not return a call for comment Friday.

Cohen, meanwhile, said he does not believe the new rules are legitimate, both because of their intent and because they have not been properly promulgated.

If the park's rules were governed by the city's planning department as a public space, there would be notice requirements and public hearings, he said. If Brookfield has the unilateral authority to impose new restrictions, on the other hand, Occupy could argue that the rules are intended as an attack on free speech.

NO PRIOR RESTRICTION ON PUBLIC ACTIVITY

Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University, said he believes that park rules against tents and other measures might withstand a First Amendment challenge.

"Occupy Wall Street can make a plausible argument that because these rules were just made up now, they aren't content-neutral," he said. "But most observers probably would say the owners are not actively hostile to the message -- they just don't want people to camp in their park. And if that's what they're objecting to, they're allowed to object to that."

Dunn, however, said the plaza's history as a public space with few regulations would strengthen the argument that the protesters should be allowed to stay.

"There's never been any restriction on public activity there," he said. "I don't even know if they have what you could describe as rules."

The city itself could also petition to have the zoning rules changed for all parks similar to Zuccotti -- that is, privately owned public spaces -- to include a curfew, just as city-owned parks have. That process would be governed by the city's uniform land-use review process and would require public hearings and reviews by the planning commission and possibly the City Council over a period of weeks, if not months.

In recent days, some cities have grown more aggressive in their efforts to prevent long-term encampments. In Oakland on Tuesday, police used tear gas and stun grenades in a violent skirmish with demonstrators who refused to leave a city plaza. Atlanta evicted dozens of protesters from a downtown park on Wednesday, while Baltimore and Providence demonstrators also face possible eviction.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; additional reporting by Erin Geiger Smith and Joan Gralla)

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