Community Essay : The High Cost of ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’ : Excessive fear of urban environments tears up a city’s social fabric and encourages the very violence it seeks to avoid.

A friend of mine, his wife and children, and another friend’s family rode L.A.’s new subway one Sunday last month. They parked at Union Station, boarded the train, exited at MacArthur Park, dined at Langer’s Deli and caught the late afternoon Metro back to downtown.

“Weren’t you afraid?” another friend asked when told of the afternoon outing. “That neighborhood is terrible. It isn’t safe.”

My friend was caught in an urban parental dilemma. He had given his kids one of those eye-opening, lifetime mementos of childhood experience, but, it seemed, he should have exercised greater caution. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken the trip at all. The other friend “would never” take such a trip, he said, especially not with children. “Who knows what could have happened!”

Unchecked, this sort of fear spreads rapidly. It is a worrisome public health hazard, as worrisome, in some respects, as the unrest and violence from which it springs. Fear is contagious. It can cripple those it infects and it is, frequently, excessive and unnecessary. The odds still favor a safe outcome for the urban family outing in any of our neighborhoods. In fact, those children may be safer on the outing than they are at home, for we have far more violence and abuse, on any given day, within our homes than on our streets. I treat many more children whose fear is home-grown than whose fear results from public violence.

Fear weakens, and may destroy, our social immune system: neighbors, friends and family.

In search of remedies for her fears, another of my friends, one who was extremely active in organizing the very successful, and safe, Los Feliz Village Street Fair last spring, asked me recently about increasing security for the fair. Even with the second King trial over, she fretted about the continued potential for violence. “Can we safely plan for this year? How many police . . . how much for security?”

“It is better to be safe than sorry,” says the adage. But at what cost? Should we accept higher walls, more gated streets, guns in the home and in our cars, more police, the National Guard, militarized checkpoints at neighborhood boundaries, or flight from the city? I hope not. Maintaining a mix of realistic caution, a personal sense of well-being and reliance on the help of those close by is a much happier solution.

I once asked my uncle, all 5-feet-4 inches of him, if he felt safe on his walk to and from work each day on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. He had been mugged twice on this daily sojourn. “I always feel safe,” he replied. “I stand straight, and I don’t think about getting hurt. I know I’ll be all right. If I would feel frightened, it would mean I die a thousand deaths.”

“We will be all right” is what those children felt and heard from their parents hile on their subway ride. It is what I hope the parents of my patients can learn to say to their children. “You can do it. I know you will learn to watch out for yourself. I trust you and I trust the world around you.” All of these are parental affirmations that bolster a child’s sense of well-being and security. If we feel it, they will.

Will we be all right? We must constantly hope and believe we will. The children are watching.