A few weeks ago, Adam Washington was tossing a football with his son, 14, at a park at Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Not too far away — but far enough to avoid being bonked by a ball — his wife was pushing their toddler in the swings.

And then two Lower Merion Township Police Department police cars pulled up.

“I said to my wife, ‘I think they’re going to come down and give us a hard time.’ And she said, ‘For what?’ And I said, ‘For throwing this ball in the park.'”

Mr. Washington was right. The officers, a man and a woman, got out and approached him. “And I said, ‘Is this all for throwing a ball?'” Mr. Washington told me in a phone call.  

The officer replied: “Somebody called.” That is, someone called the cops to report “two men” playing catch. The male officer asked Washington for his name and birthdate.

Interestingly, the female officer already knew his name, because Washington owns a boxing gym in town and is also a local real estate agent. He’d ducked out to the park — which is about 150 feet from his home — for a rare moment of family time between his two jobs.

That particular park, though, the cops schooled Washington, is the “Tot Lot,” and only for children ages 2 to 5. They pointed to a sign laying out the regulations — even as older children were clambering over the equipment. 

Even as two of the other local parks — not only for tots — were undergoing renovation. “So I can’t play at the park with my family?” Mr. Washington asked. After all, many families have one child younger than 5 and one older.

The officers said that being there, playing catch, near little kids (even if neither bothering nor narrowly missing them) was against the rules. They also indicated that the caller had thought there were two “men” playing in the park, not a dad and son.

Once they left, Mr. Washington called the precinct. “I told them I was the guy who someone had just called the cops on for tossing around a football with my son, and I told them I read the rules and there was nothing on them about playing with balls in the park.”

He added that “eventually they told me that it’s not the ball that’s the problem, it’s that only kids up to age 5 are supposed to play in the park. In other words, I’m supposedly not allowed to hang out in the park with my family, since one of my kids is past the age limit,” Mr. Washington told Philly Mag, which first reported the story.

The police said they were too busy to talk, Mr. Washington told me. And yet they weren’t “too busy to send two cop cars to the park.”

So he called the township and arranged to speak at their next meeting.

At that meeting about a week ago, Mr. Washington got up to say he didn’t think the police should be showing up to enforce park rules. After all, playground rules “aren’t laws.”

The township said they would discuss the matter, and Mr. Washington hopes they do. If not, “I’m going to reactivate the issue, because what is the endgame here?” When the officers came up to him in the park, he’d wondered, “Can you write a citation? Can you take me to jail?”

The freedom to toss a ball in a park is not nothing. It gets at the heart of community, family and the ability to live our lives without the authorities punishing us for being imperfect. Let he who has never transgressed a park rule cast the first stone.

While his son “chuckled” at the whole experience, Mr. Washington said, “I’ve been a freedom fighter all my life.”

Go get ’em.

Creators.com