Crime Honors No Boundaries : Suburbs as well as cities are beset by the rising tide of violence

Over the weekend, six people were slain and eight people were wounded within one relatively small geographical area. Venice? South-Central Los Angeles, perhaps? No, Orange County, the prototypical safe American suburb.

Orange County is hardly alone in experiencing a dramatic rise in suburban violence. In the last week there were seven homicides, including a drive-by shooting, a murder-suicide and a fatal stabbing, across the San Fernando Valley and Glendale--once tranquil areas.

Most would probably agree that until now the suburbs have represented two components of the California dream: first, the notion of owning one’s own place in the sun, however modest; second, the assumption of personal safety. Now, for many, economic recession has made homeownership more difficult to achieve. And crime in once-calm neighborhoods has shaken our belief that the suburbs are safer than the city.

In San Clemente--once the summer home of former President Richard Nixon--a high school senior was in a coma after being speared in the head with a metal rod following a football game Friday night; a group he was part of was assaulted by suspected gang members. Such horrors increasingly have people worried about safety, a fact underlined by a poll on family issues done for The Times in Orange County last summer.

Remember when Southern California’s suburbs prompted envy and even amazement? The archetypes of the “good life” found expression in Valley girls and shopping malls, bronzed surfers and sprawling housing tracts--but, thankfully, not in images of violence.

Californians still nourish their own perceptions, a point exemplified by the contrasting views of city and suburb in Monday’s Voices section of The Times: To some living outside the city, Los Angeles is too crowded, too dangerous and too inaccessible; to others, Orange County, for example, is a vast cultural wasteland.

Most of us know that the truth lies somewhere between. Culture is not found only in Los Angeles; you can hear good music in places like Cerritos and Costa Mesa. But there are also gang-related shootouts near schools in Irvine. In short, it is no longer possible to run from urban violence, so we must all work to find ways to do something about it--from strengthening the family to achieving much stronger gun control. There is really no other way when the line between problem-ridden city and safe suburb has all but vanished.