EDITORIAL CODDLING GANGSTERS CHEAP AND UNREALISTIC PUBLIC POLICIES PUT L.A. RESIDENTS AT RISK.

IT doesn't take an expert to realize that Los Angeles has a gang problem. That was made clear yet again Sunday when a gang-related shooting in Lake View Terrace left three adults dead and two minors injured.

But the accounts of experts from within the law-enforcement community, many of whom have spoken on the record to the Daily News, suggest that the problem is even worse than it appears. Even as gang violence is going up and likely to escalate in the months ahead, officials are scaling back their efforts.

At the root is indifference and a lack of common sense among our leaders - not funding as they claim, since they endlessly find ways to spend our tax dollars on themselves and their pet projects.

Gov. Gray Davis blamed budget problems for gutting funding for the highly successful CLEAR anti-gang task force. City and county leaders have been unwilling to make up the difference, and now CLEAR is on the verge of being dismantled.

That only compounds the already severe shortage of gang-suppression and probation officers to monitor the roughly 2,000 juvenile gang members in the San Fernando Valley. Where there used to be eight Valley anti-gang probation officers, there are now only three.

As a result, probation provisions for convicted gang members, including curfews and dress-code requirements, have gone largely unenforced. And police lack the resources and the intelligence to track gang activity.

But the problem isn't confined to funding or the appropriation of resources. It's also one of philosophy.

Richard Shumsky, the county's chief probation officer, said that he hasn't refilled anti-gang positions because he's focusing on a more flexible approach that relies heavily on social programs. So in the place of probation officers who make sure that gangsters are obeying the law, he's channeled funds toward mental-health screening, school-based officers and close cooperation with nonprofit groups.

These are worthwhile programs, and they have their place in a comprehensive anti-gang strategy. But they are no substitute for honest-to-goodness law-enforcement, which must be the first focus of government.

Shumsky's hopes of reforming gangsters won't work because hardened criminals cannot easily be coddled out of their ways. That takes coercion - the intimidating presence of a probation officer who visits regularly, and the threat of going to jail for even the slightest infraction.

In the meantime, trying to play nice with gangsters and giving them free rein on the streets puts lives of innocent people at risk.

There is no greater threat to L.A.'s public safety than its street gangs, and no amount of social tinkering will make them go away. This is a concern that can no longer be shortchanged.