EDITORIAL FALSE SOLUTION THE CITY COUNCIL'S BURGLAR ALARM PLAN PLAYS POLITICS WITH PUBLIC SAFETY NEEDS.

CONFRONTED with the problem of false alarms that waste 15 percent of patrol officers' time, the Los Angeles City Council seems headed toward the most predictable sort of solution:

A political one.

On Tuesday, two council committees, desperate to quell the fears of the burglar alarm industry and the business and homeowner community it serves, approved an alternative plan to the Police Commission's decision in January to stop responding to unverified burglar alarms.

The committees' plan would allow businesses and homeowners not one, not two, but three false alarms before suffering any consequences. At that point, their alarms would no longer get answered at all, but only for a year.

The plan does very little to address the Police Commission's concerns.

The commission, at the urging of Chief William Bratton, changed the Los Angeles Police Department's alarm policy because the time city cops waste answering false alarms could be spent actively patrolling neighborhoods - a far better deterrent to criminal activity.

So the commission decided to stop answering unverified calls altogether - a decision that might have been overkill since there was no exploration of real alternatives. At least it was an honorable attempt to free up the city's scarce policing resources.

But alarm-industry lobbyists and neighborhood councils went into hysterics. They urged the City Council to intervene, presenting the council with an opportunity to craft a real compromise, one that makes alarms an asset and not a hindrance to city policing.

So far, the council seems to have squandered that opportunity.

The council committees' proposal to allow offenders three false alarms a year is way too generous, and unlikely to significantly reduce the number of time-consuming violations. The committees didn't even bother to estimate what effect their policy would have on false alarms, let alone offer any assurances that it would work - and work soon when the LAPD is 10 percent below its authorized strength.

The committees were seemingly more interested in a deal that would quiet the debate than in actually making L.A. safer.

Even if the full council goes along with this proposal, it's up to the Police Commission to decide the city's policy. Bratton and the commission ought to do the serious thinking that the council shirked. That means coming up with a real system of deterrence to prevent false alarms, including stiff fines for both alarm owners and the alarm companies.

At the very least, the fee for a false alarm should cover the cost of sending cops out to answer it. That kind of penalty would go a long way toward persuading alarm companies, homeowners and businesses alike to upgrade their technology or turn off their alarms.

One percent of the city's population should not be getting 15 percent of the patrol services. By taking real steps to dramatically reduce false alarms, the city would get security firms back to their intended purpose: helping cops keep us all safe.

That isn't asking too much of our city leaders, is it?