EDITORIAL A SAFER CITY BRATTON HAS EARNED ANOTHER FIVE-YEAR TERM AS CHIEF.

WITH William Bratton's first five-year contract nearing expiration, the Los Angeles Police Commission must soon decide whether it wants to keep him on as police chief. That decision ought to be a no-brainer.

According to the FBI, Los Angeles is now the second-safest big city in America -- behind only New York, which has four times as many cops. That's an awesome accomplishment, and the credit belongs to Bratton and the men and women who make up the Los Angeles Police Department.

Consider where the LAPD was before Bratton came to town: Officers bristled under the leadership of Bernard Parks. The Rampart scandal still casts a cloud of disgrace over the department. And L.A. had been named the homicide capital of America, with 656 slayings in 2002.

Now look where we are today: Not only is L.A. the second-safest city in America, but crime is down overall. There were just 355 homicides in L.A. last year.

The statistics are made all the more impressive given that the understaffed department continues to lose more cops than it hires, and that it remains hamstrung by an expensive and onerous federal consent decree.

Although there was much to criticize about the leadership of former Mayor James Hahn -- including the ham-handed way he fired Parks -- hiring Bratton was the saving grace of his administration. It's also been a boon for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has been able to focus his administration on other concerns, knowing that the LAPD is in good hands.

Villaraigosa, not surprisingly, has already endorsed Bratton's second term. And seeing that the Police Commission is made up of Villaraigosa appointees, Bratton's extension would seem to be a done deal -- except for the quibblers on the City Council who like to take credit for other people's good works.

Bratton has been good for L.A. The city's crime problems -- especially gang violence -- are far from solved, but with the right chief at the helm, there's good reason to believe that L.A. will only keep getting safer.