If the Chief’s Granddaughter Isn’t Safe . . .

On many days, Bernard Parks can pick up the morning paper and read about a murder. For the ones that don’t make the paper, he can head over to Homicide virtually every day and read a report on a new one.

Yes, it’s safe to say the Los Angeles police chief can read a murder report any time he wants. Last year in Los Angeles, there were more than 400 homicides. An almost identical number in 1998. Behind every one is either a sad tale or an angry tale. Always a pathetic tale. Almost always, it involves people we know nothing about.

The report Parks will get this week will be the one that hurts the most and be the one he’ll want to read the least.

In one of those cruel ironies that put her picture on the front page of the papers, Lori Gonzalez, Parks’ 20-year-old granddaughter, was shot and killed Sunday night in Los Angeles. Police said she and a friend were about to pull out of a fast-food restaurant parking lot when someone approached the passenger side and fired, apparently at the male passenger. He ducked. Gonzalez, who was driving, was hit numerous times, police said.

Gonzalez, a week shy of her 21st birthday, was enrolled at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. Its rustic, off-the-beaten-track surroundings are deceiving--the school has 24,000 full- and part-time students--so it’s not as though Gonzalez stood out or was widely known. It’s doubtful many people even knew of her family connection to Parks.

Still, “everyone here is devastated by the incident itself, no matter whose daughter or granddaughter she was,� says Saddleback Vice President Vern Hodge. “The incident itself is a sad commentary about what seems to happen all too often these days.�

Everyone Knows No One Is Really Safe

Another of the cruel ironies at play here is that Saddleback is one of the area’s safest campuses and Mission Viejo, where Gonzalez lived with her father, is one of the safest communities.

Those of us who live in Orange County aren’t so naive as to think we live in some cloistered abbey where crime doesn’t intrude. But when an incident like this hits the papers and you dig up some statistics, Orange County almost qualifies as a sanctuary when you compare the numbers:

Murders in the city of Los Angeles in 1999 totaled 424, two fewer than in 1998. In Orange County, with about two-thirds the population of L.A., 93 homicides were reported in 1999, up from 85 the year before. In the last two years, then, Orange County had 178 homicides; Los Angeles, 850.

It’s not that she should have been safe just because she was Bernard Parks’ granddaughter. It’s that not even the police chief’s granddaughter, cruising through a drive-through restaurant, can count on being safe.

Preliminary theories center on the gunman possibly having a score to settle with Gonzalez’s companion, who wasn’t hurt. Police said they have no reason to believe the gunman knew she was related to Parks.

I will make this prediction: His granddaughter’s killer will be found.

Like most Orange County residents, my impressions of Chief Parks are formed only by what I read in the paper or see on TV. He has a reputation as a no-nonsense cop.

If a top-notch detective isn’t on the case already, I’d be surprised. And if the cops working the streets haven’t been authorized to offer whatever they have to street-corner informants, I’d be doubly surprised.

Even in this day and age, the odds obviously are still overwhelmingly in our favor that we won’t be victims of violent crime.

But as countless families have discovered, those odds mean nothing when someone you love has been killed.

Bernard Parks probably knew that before; now, we know he does. There’s nothing left but to find the killer.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].