CAUGHT IN CROSS-FIRE PETTY, DEADLY CRIMINALS KILL OUT OF SHEER CARELESSNESS.

Byline: Joseph Honig

OUT here at the territorial imperative, in a pastel city of trends and travails, my dentist, an otherwise peaceable sort, keeps a loaded .45 automatic in his glove compartment.

He worries about riots, about home invasions, about a devastating earthquake and the uninvited hordes it might bring to his Brentwood gate in search of food, water and flashlights.

And as of last week, he worries about shopping for tires, baby food and the bottled water he says he can't live without.

Because when unfeeling, trigger-happy robbers botched a recent armored car stickup, their errant slugs left one Valley Costco shopper dead and two critically wounded.

``That does it. That tears it,'' said Louis the dentist. ``The next time I need a case of Coke, the gun goes in with me.''

Now Louis is not a stupid man. Nor is he gun-crazy. But each time he reads of, say, a half-dozen or so souls wounded by gunfire at a public magnet like Santa Monica's pier, he adds a destination to which he'll bring his handgun.

It does no good to tell him that his chances of stumbling into a gunfight, bank robbery or assassination are roughly those of winning the lottery.

Louis simply does not feel safe.

Over the years, he has become one of those stalwart citizens who, despite falling crime statistics, don't believe we're winning the war against the thugs, thieves and triggermen whose stray bullets find their ways into infants, young mothers, students and, in one notorious case, a teacher at his blackboard.

Los Angeles, that temperate paradise we share with henchmen and hustlers, needs a better class of criminal.

And fast.

Time was there was honor and a rough-edged dignity among thieves; even organized crime sponsored peace conferences worthy of Camp David.

Mafia monarchs like Carlo Gambino and Joe Bonano ensured that cops and civilians were safe to walk the streets, while West Coast crime barons like Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna and, yes, even Bugsy Siegel guaranteed that button men only killed each other.

Why even now-imprisoned New York superboss John Gotti could whack a rival on a teeming street without so much as scratching a fire hydrant.

And indeed, the Gambino and Bonano crime families were built on murder, loansharking, theft and violence - and their publics knew it. But walk down Mulberry Street in Manhattan's Little Italy, or 109th Street past Gotti's old Queens clubhouse, and you'll find citizens unafraid to leave doors unlocked, worry-free whether kids will arrive safely home from school.

They understand that unlike the streets of L.A., their own little corners of gangland will never witness drive-by shootings or gunfights that spill over into schoolyards.

Lacking the Mafia's sense of organization and discipline, the Fortune 500 savvy of Colombia's narcotics cartels, our third-rate outlaws fulfill lives outside the law with small-time protection schemes, retail dope rackets and the nonprofit mission of ensuring enemy torpedoes stay clear of favored corners and fast-food joints. When they try something bigger, something on the order of an armored car job, well, you know the results.

Memorialized in gangsta rap, they grandstand about protecting their turf and communities, about standing for something other than wanton, deadly aggression.

But if you're looking for inner-city Robin Hoods, look elsewhere.

The men and women who cruise our streets brandishing tattoos and machine guns are nothing more than selfish, spineless brigands who occasionally con reporters into believing they've smoked peace pipes instead of crack pipes.

So many scared and scarred innocent victims know better.

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Photo:

An LAPD officer with a shotgun stands outside the Costco in Van Nuys where gunmen shot and killed a customer and wounded others.

Lexey Swall/Special to the Daily News