EDITORIAL AS GOOD AS IT GETS? A VALLEY CITY COULD HARDLY DO WORSE AT PUBLIC SAFETY THAN THE LAPD.

AMAZINGLY, Mayor James Hahn and fellow opponents of San Fernando Valley cityhood use the Los Angeles Police Department as an argument against secession. If the Valley breaks off from L.A., they warn, the quality of policing will suffer on both sides of the hill.

But is that even possible?

The LAPD is the department that recently threw out crucial pieces of DNA evidence from more than 1,000 criminal cases. Why? Because its officers were ignorant of a change in state law governing the statute of limitations on such cases.

Think about that: Police officers, criminalists who specialize in handling such evidence, didn't know about a major change in a law that directly affects what they are paid to do.

Embarrassed and chagrined, the city Police Commission has ordered acting Chief Martin Pomeroy to devise a system for keeping cops abreast of future developments.

That's a fine idea, albeit a day late and a dollar short.

DNA evidence might be the most important law enforcement development in the past century, but the LAPD seems all too slow to catch on.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley warned the commission Tuesday that the LAPD's planned staff contributions to a new, joint city-county crime lab were pathetically inadequate.

The county now has 19 criminalists, which it plans to increase to 70 by the time the facility opens in three years. The LAPD, which handles roughly the same amount of DNA evidence as the county Sheriff's Department, has only seven criminalists on staff, which it hopes to beef up to a piddly 13.

The problem, according to Pomeroy, is that the department doesn't have enough cash in its budget to hire the criminalists it needs. Julie Wong, a spokesman for Mayor James Hahn, adds that the department has a hard time filling the positions.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Demoralization at the LAPD is so widespread that the department has a hard time recruiting anybody. Between lousy recruiting and lousier retention, the department has seen its force dwindle to the point that it remains 1,000 officers below its authorized strength.

And that's only the very tip of the LAPD's dysfunction.

Due to its past abuses and the spineless leadership in L.A. City Hall, the LAPD is manacled by a federal court consent decree.

City Hall, meanwhile, chews up and destroys its chiefs.

Undermanned and overwhelmed, the LAPD has been impotent to stop the current explosion in crime and gang violence.

Are we really supposed to believe that this is as good as it gets? The Valley should remain a part of Los Angeles so it can retain the LAPD and this caliber of policing?

Is it possible that no matter what an independent Valley does, the quality of policing could actually deteriorate further? That seems highly unlikely.

The Valley has barely 20 percent of the city's police officers for 37 percent of its people and 50 percent of its land. The Valley deserves better.

A Valley city's leadership, one not beholden to the downtown special interests or the status quo, seems all but certain to do at least a little better.

After all, it couldn't do much worse.