In LA, playing football in the streets is a crime. A city council member wants to change that

In 1936, there were no video games to keep children inside. Many homes did not have televisions.

Amid concerns that children playing in the streets will be hit by cars, Los Angeles has made it illegal to play baseball, basketball, soccer or any other football game on the street or sidewalk.

After nearly a century, when children spend half as much time outside as their parents do, City Council Member Bob Blumenfield wants to cut the vague law from the books.

Blumenfield, who approved the proposal to start the program, called the law, with its penalties of a $1,000 fine and six months in jail, “absolutely stupid.”

It is a crime for a parent to play catch on the sidewalk with a child in front of their home, said Blumenfield, who represents the southwest San Fernando Valley. And a group of kids can’t kick a soccer ball on a residential street without breaking the law.

The law also prohibits throwing “a stone, pellet, bullet, arrow or any other projectile, into, over, across, near or into any road or street or into any public park.” It prohibits the playing of football games in public parks, except on designated courts or stadiums.

“Let the kids play,” said Olsen Ebright, of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council. “Why in God’s name did we make the city try to stop playing football or throwing the ball?”

The benefits of exercising in the public realm, when done safely and under supervision, outweigh the risks of injury or property damage, such as a baseball going through a neighbor’s window, Ebright said.

Blumenfield’s proposal, introduced last August, was unanimously supported by the City Council in a January vote, absent only Blumenfield, and the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council. To move forward, the city attorney’s office needs to write language codifying the change.

Blumenfield staff discovered the 1936 law while researching civil rights, said Kristine Cajulis, the council member’s communications deputy. Cajulis said he does not know of anyone who has been punished under the law.

Another enforcement incident occurred in 2006, when a former city council deputy reported his neighbors in Sherman Oaks for having basketball hoops near their street, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

In addition to the no-football rule, neighbors have been accused of violating a law that prohibits buildings on the side of roads or grass strips near curbs.

Nate Brogin had created a basketball hoop that attracted local kids to play pickup games and helped his 18-year-old son lose 30 pounds.

Brogin, who said that at that time the law was like fascism, fought the city, unsuccessfully. He said he never paid his fine – he can’t remember how much it was – but he eventually took it down.

“It’s too long to allow something so regressive to continue,” Brogin, now 77, said of the law.

In newspaper stories from the 1930s, local officials warned parents to keep their children from playing in the streets to avoid being hit by cars.

Children should be allowed to play in empty yards or empty spaces but should not be allowed to “endanger themselves by playing their games in the path of moving traffic,” said George Hjelte, then president of Los Angeles Playgrounds, in a Feb. 3, 1936 Daily Breeze.

In today’s LA, street safety groups Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone see Blumenfield’s proposal as a positive step. Safety starts with drivers paying attention to people on the road, whether they are cycling, walking or playing.

Some drivers in Los Angeles believe the road is theirs, said Michael Schneider, founder and CEO of Streets For All.

“Changing that takes more than passing the law,” he said.

Children still play in the streets of Brogin’s Sherman Oaks neighborhood. He said less than 10 cars go by in an average hour, and drivers stop to let kids stop their games and get out of the way — just like he did when he was a boy.

“It’s a great social game,” Brogin said. “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”