Let's state the obvious: we don't yet know exactly what happened. It could be a double homicide, a murder-suicide, an overdose, or something else entirely. Authorities haven't said, and speculation without facts helps nobody.

But here's what we do know: this kind of discovery — bodies in cars, in parks, in broad proximity to everyday life — has become disturbingly routine across the Bay Area. Whether the cause turns out to be violence or the fentanyl crisis that continues to ravage our streets, the result is the same: lives lost in public spaces while the institutions tasked with keeping people safe seem perpetually a step behind.

One Bay Area resident put it bluntly online, commenting that the incident "sounds like there's some primo fent on Berkeley" — dark humor, sure, but it reflects a grim familiarity that no community should have to develop.

Berkeley, like San Francisco, loves to talk about compassion and progressive values. But compassion without competence is just a bumper sticker. If this turns out to be drug-related, it's another data point in a crisis that local governments have spent billions addressing with remarkably little to show for it. If it's a violent crime, it raises equally uncomfortable questions about public safety in spaces that are supposed to belong to everyone.

We'll update this story as more information becomes available. In the meantime, two people are dead, and Aquatic Park — a place where you're supposed to watch herons, not become a crime scene — is wrapped in police tape.

At some point, we have to stop accepting this as normal.