EDITORIAL : OUTGUNNED POLICE LAPD FIREPOWER WAS AN ISSUE BEFORE BANK SHOOTOUT.

Even before Friday's street gunfight in North Hollywood, Los Angeles Police Department brass and other city officials were quite aware that street criminals are packing more firepower than police.

The issue had received a lot of attention within the LAPD, and there already were calls for upping the weaponry of the police force.

But such decisions are hardly simple. That's especially true when the LAPD has critics who oppose the use of more powerful firearms - and who seem automatically critical of virtually any use of force by officers, and invariably appear more suspicious of the police than of the criminal suspects they arrest.

In that climate of law enforcement politics, one of the items that Police Chief Willie L. Williams has had under consideration is a proposal from his own officers and their union, the Police Protective League, for permission to carry higher-power sidearms.

We expect that logjam to be broken wide open by the televised gunbattle in North Hollywood and the subsequent flood of public support for the LAPD. The people of Los Angeles saw the police clearly outgunned and courageously using small sidearms against bank robbers with full body armor and powerful rapid-fire rifles.

Now, Williams is proposing a pilot project to give some patrol officers .45-caliber handguns, and Mayor Richard Riordan is suggesting the wider availability of high-power rifles.

Those are credible recommendations, and they could have been taken a long time ago. It's not sensible for officers to have to do as they did Friday, rushing to a local gun shop to arm themselves with more potent weaponry to bring down assailants who were roaming city streets at will. Clearly, the LAPD must re-examine its practices so it can provide officers with fast, appropriate and controlled access to an escalating arsenal of weapons in real-life situations.

No single weapon is ideal for all circumstances, and there is a limit to the firepower that officers should carry on patrol. But there must be a better way to get raw stopping power quickly to the scene - whether it's carried in a field sergeant's trunk, dispatched from the station house as needed, or supplied in some other manner.

This episode is a vivid reminder of the importance of having strong, decisive leadership at the top levels of the LAPD. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Strong leadership also is needed on a host of other issues related to inadequate equipment and outmoded procedures.

In 1996, management consultants spotlighted a range of woeful shortcomings in the LAPD, from the police academy using wooden blocks as make-believe radios during training because of a shortage of real radios, to the waste of many hours of time during every shift change for officers to sign out shotguns, radios and other equipment. The department didn't have enough equipment to

permanently assign items to every patrol officer - even though the value of the lost time greatly exceeded the cost of the additional equipment.

LAPD officials have been working on those issues, but many of L.A.'s finest probably feel like they're swimming against the tide - because the department must contend with vocal critics on the outside while fighting bureaucratic inertia on the inside - and all the while it seems to be finding new areas badly in need of overhauling and modern management improvements.

That is why effective, strong leadership is vital at the highest levels of the LAPD, if the department and the people of Los Angeles are to see meaningful progress achieved in so many important areas at once.