EDITORIAL : IN THE LINE OF DUTY; OUTGUNNED AGAIN, ANOTHER LAPD OFFICER FALLS AND WE LEARN TOO MUCH, TOO LATE.

``WHY did my daddy have to die?''

The question was posed by the grieving 7-year-old son of Brian Brown, the Los Angeles police officer gunned down Sunday night while chasing a heavily armed slaying suspect.

With its simplicity and innocence, Dylon Brown's question reminds us the men and women who wear LAPD blue uniforms padded with Kevlar and pinned with badges are human beings like the rest of us - fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters - who put their lives on the line to make the streets safe for us.

Brian Brown was a father simply doing his job when he was gunned down near the Fox Hills Mall by a 23-year-old thug who allegedly was involved in a fatal shooting of another young man minutes earlier.

The cop killer, himself killed by Brown's colleagues, wielded a assault rifle so powerful there is really no need to aim because the bullets fire in such rapid succession they are bound to hit something.

When one of those bullets struck Brown, it also struck a nerve in every person in the community who has a conscience and understands the hard, perilous work Los Angeles Police Department officers carry out 24 hours a day.

After the February 1997 bank robbery and shootout on the streets of North Hollywood, the LAPD beefed up its firepower, purchasing surplus military rifles and permitting its officers to carry .45-caliber handguns.

But the LAPD's military rifles are stored in the trunks of some patrol cars and, obviously, cannot be accessed without getting out of the car.

Sunday night, Brown, a Marine who earned a Purple Heart while serving in Somalia, and his partner never had time to use theirs, even if they had one. Maybe it's time for the department to buy more rifles and store them inside the vehicle, like the 12-gauge shotguns.

Brown is the third Los Angeles police officer to die on the job this year. He was a divorced father who doted on his son. He was just 27. He was popular, quick with a joke and a rising star in the department - only we'll never know how high he would have climbed.