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Police "Sweep Park" to Let Kids Play02-25-08 | News

Police "Sweep Park" to Let Kids Play

L.A. police recently began, one afternoon a week, "clearing out" little Gladys Park in Los Angeles' skid row to give the local kids some park play time, unmolested by drug dealers, street people and the homeless. This image is of a 3-on-3 basketball tournament recently held.

In this issue we present some great parks from cities across the country. We know, of course, that not all kids are fortunate to have a recreation facility like The Edge@Allen Station Park or the benefit of the many park amenities featured in this park issue.

The L.A. Times just made us aware of a little park just 30 miles from our offices that is the park for kids in and around 6th & Gladys Street in Los Angeles. It is aptly named Glady Park, but it is nearly nonexistent??"even to L.A. Parks & Rec, whose website has a cartoon graphic of kids running and grinning, but if you click on Gladys Park all that appears are the cross streets and a link to a map. The rest of the page is blank! Well, sometimes blank says a lot.

Gladys Park is within a district whose 50 square blocks, the L.A. Times reports, is "believed to be home to 400 registered sex offenders and 3,000 people on probation or parole for violent crimes or drug charges.

We should point out that L.A., by our count, has 249 parks, with Griffith Park at 4,210 acres one of the larges parks in the U.S. L.A., however, only has three universally accessible playgrounds. L.A. does have 164 rec centers, seven skate parks ??_ and nine dog parks.