By Lenore Skenazy   Reason

“The next step, after tickets, it goes to child abuse.”

What happens on a summer’s eve when a couple dozen kids and parents spill into the street for a neighborhood game of kickball?

On a well-manicured street in Colorado Springs last week, this occasioned three cop cars, eight officers, and a citation for “obstructing passage or assembly.”

The crime? Frolicking. More specifically: playing in the street without a permit.

The perpetrators, Ed Snyder and Joe Coleman, are hard-boiled recidivists. For four summers now, these men have brazenly organized weekly, 90-minute kickball games that bring out neighbors of all ages, from toddlers to teens to parents. Until recently, the games were not deemed a threat to public safety. But apparently a neighbor complained, and that was enough for the Colorado Springs Police Department to spring into action.

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