Looking for an explanation

LOLITA HARPER

OK. I’ll say what everyone is thinking: What the (bleep) is going on

around here?

We have just come off of a week of some of the most bizarre and

tragic events I’ve seen since starting at this paper. A 20-year-old

man was shot dead in broad daylight while hanging out in a Costa Mesa

alley with four of his friends. A Newport Beach woman was held

captive in her own home while a man bound and gagged her and her

assistant and then set fire to her home. And then, masked men smashed

the display window of a Lido Village jewelry store -- again, in broad

daylight -- grabbed handfuls of expensive jewels and took off, while

the owner of the store played vigilante, firing a loaded gun in the

middle of the street.

Newport Beach Mayor Steve Bromberg expressed his disbelief at the

recent events about three times Thursday at a beachside barbecue in

honor of the city’s Fire and Marine Department.

“It’s been a strange couple of days around here,” he said.

Those around him nodded. Perhaps it was something in the water,

one person joked.

Hmmm. Perhaps. So I called the folks at Mesa Consolidated Water

District to see if any extra additives have been put in the area’s

drinking water. After all, the headquarters is on Placentia Avenue,

just a few blocks from the deadly shooting.

“Uh, no,” said district spokeswoman Amanda Gavin, who was caught

totally off guard by the question.

Just the usual nitrate, fluoride, vanadium, calcium, sulfate,

chloride and so on and so on. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“So there is nothing different happening over there that we should

know about?” I asked.

“We lowered the rates by two cents,” Gavin said.

Yeah ... I don’t think that’s it.

Nancy, a tall, slender blond, who is a regular at Coffee Bean &

Tea Leaf, mulled over Friday’s issue of the Daily Pilot while waiting

for her skinny, half-caff, vanilla latte. (For those of you who are

not hip to the coffee house lingo, that means her latte was made with

nonfat milk and only half the caffeine.) She perused the mornings

headlines and shook her head in dismay.

“Crazy isn’t it?” I asked her.

“What? Are the planets misaligned or something,” she asked

rhetorically.

Hmmm. Perhaps Venus is in a bad house or something. I couldn’t

call Miss Cleo, or any other 976 number from the office, and the

psychic known as Mahala wanted $35.97 to tell me of Earth’s impending

doom, so I looked online.

World renowned astrologer Derek Hawkins said Saturn is in

opposition to Chiron between Sept. 25 and Oct. 24.

“The influence of this alignment could be felt in all fields of

health-care,” Hawkins wrote on his Web site. “Saturn represents

governing bodies, and Chiron represents health and well-being. Issues

relating to legislation in the sale of health supplements and the

practicing of complementary medicine may be confronted during this

period.”

Well, that explains the grocery strikes, but what about all this

random violence?

Perhaps it’s something really nutty, such as the fact that crime

seems to rise when the economy is bad. Sure, overall crime rates are

down, thankfully, in the latest reports released by the Department of

Justice last week, but what if this is the tip of the iceberg?

The Costa Mesa Police Department weekend watch commander, who

wanted to keep his name out of the paper, said it was his

“non-expert” opinion that violence does increase when money and

tempers are short. People are stressed about money and their jobs;

they are needy, perhaps a little desperate, bitter or resentful.

“I mean, it’s common sense, I think,” the sergeant said.

The violent crime rate peaked in 1991, during the recession.

Professor Glenn Elert, the editor of the Physics Handbook, an

online publication that takes a scientific approach to trends rather

than a political approach, basically warns us all to get used to

crime sprees.

“Although national security has been tightening and focused on

protecting the nation after the World Trade Center bombing, based on

the statistics of the past 44 years, it can be predicted that the

number of crimes committed in the U.S. will continue to rise as long

as the nation’s economy continues to worsen and unemployment

increases,” Elert writes.

Could it be that economic times are getting so bad that the ill

effects are even creeping their way into Newport-Mesa -- often

sheltered from the ill effects of a bad economy by the thick Orange

Curtain?

Nah, that’s crazy talk. It must be something in the air.

* LOLITA HARPER writes columns Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and

covers culture and the arts. She may be reached at (949) 574-4275 or

by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.