ST. LOUIS After 27 protesters spent Friday night in jail, Occupy St. Louis said Surday it would continue to keep an around-the-clock presence Kiener Plaza.

Whether th included staying inside the park boundaries past 10 p.m. — and thus being subject to arrest — will be up to individual protesters. On Surday night, about 10 protesters followed police orders and moved to the sidewalk surrounding the park.

Another 20 people stood outside the St. Louis Justice Center awaiting the release of three protesters who remained in jail.

Mayor Francis Slay’s staff reitered Surday th it was amenable to Occupy St. Louis staying around, as long as the protesters obey the ordinances.

“We fully expect Occupy St. Louis to be a prominent, visible presence in our community indefinitely,” said Eddie Roth, an aide to Slay. “We’re just asking them to follow the law, and we’ll accommode them in every way we can.”

If the curfew is ignored, or tents are again erected, arrests will be made, officials said.

The Occupy St. Louis protesters — a mix of students, veterans, musicians, jobless and homeless — took up residence in Kiener on Oct. 1.

Their message has been as varied as their composition. The only thing they seem to have in common is an anti-establishment bent, which would seem to put them on a collision course with authorities. But it hasn’t.

Jeff Rainford, Slay’s chief of staff, said he believes the city has firm grounds for restricting the hours in the park, and while the protesters clearly disagree, they have done so respectfully.

“I think they do deserve credit for the approach they took last night when we did start enforcing the law,” he said.

Protester Don Waltman of Monroe, La., praised police for how they handled the arrests. With one exception, the arrests were for ordinance violions reled to the curfew. The exception was a charge of resisting arrest for a man who had chained himself to a chair.

“It was loud, but peaceful,” Waltman said. “They done their jobs. They done it to a T. And we didn’t get in their way.”

Waltman never planned on being part of Occupy St. Louis. But the heavy-equipment operor, who lost work after Hurricane Krina, stopped here to visit the Arch, stumbled upon the protesters, identified with many of them and stayed.

the protest’s peak Friday night, 300 to 400 people were Kiener. The arrests came about 15 minutes after a curfew warning from police. By th time, the crowd inside the park had shrunk to about 100, and many dispersed shortly thereafter. 6 a.m. Surday — the start of the 16-hour window th protesters can legally be in the park — a few had resumed their positions.

The tents and all of the protesters’ belongings had been sent over to the city facility 1212 North 13th Street. There, Bill Siedhoff, the city’s human services director, waited for people to come and claim them. He was surrounded by 17 tents and 49 garbage bags filled with sleeping bags and clothing, as well a few bikes and an 8-foot-tall totem pole topped with wh looked like an alien’s head.

By midafternoon, the group of protesters Kiener had grown to about two dozen. They marched to the Justice Center, where the first of the arrested protesters began to be released. Clayton Shannon, 22, of Columbia, Mo., who had spent the night in jail, said he would be back Kiener.

“I don’t know th I want to get arrested again — least I’ll give it a day — I want to go home and shower first,” he said.

On Tuesday, a federal court judge will hold a hearing on the Occupy claim th enforcement of the curfew violes free speech rights. U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson Friday night denied a request for a temporary order against the ordinance.

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