EDITORIAL FLEXIBLE FAILURE LAPD'S COMPRESSED WORKWEEK HAS LED TO MORE, NOT LESS, CRIME.

IT'S been more than a year since Mayor James Hahn successfully pushed through a compressed workweek for the Los Angeles Police Department, and the evidence suggests cops are happier but less productive.

Emergency response times and arrests have gone down - and crime has gone up since Hahn rewarded the police union for its political support by giving officers the three- and four-day workweek.

But to hear the folks in City Hall tell it, the jury's still out on the controversial reform that lets cops work just three days a week.

Don't rush to judgment, they say. Those negative trends about police services getting worse could be caused by any number of factors.

Yet when it comes to discussing some of the more positive developments at the LAPD - like reduced sick time, fewer paid overtime hours at the end of shifts and improved recruiting - City Hall insiders are all too eager to credit the shortened workweek.

It's also a lot of meaningless spin.

A year is plenty of time to evaluate the effects of a program. The flexible schedule has obviously yielded some positive results, but ultimately, the key measure of policing is public safety.

Put it another way: Are L.A.'s streets safer or more dangerous since the implementation of the compressed workweek?

By that standard, Hahn's payback to the police union for endorsing his mayoral campaign appears to be less than successful. It certainly hasn't yet lived up to the lofty expectations he set when he repeatedly claimed that the flexible schedule was more than just good politics, it was good policy.

The numbers don't bear that out.

In the San Fernando Valley, where police response times have long been the slowest in the city, they have become even slower, going from an average of 9.7 to 9.8 minutes.

That's a modest increase, but then, in the Valley, things couldn't get much worse. The real deterioration was elsewhere in the city, where response times shot up from the 8- to the 9-minute range, a crucial difference during an emergency.

Likewise, arrests are down 10 percent in the Valley and 7 percent citywide. And throughout L.A., the most serious kinds of crimes have risen by 1 percent.

By all indications, the compressed workweek - so far - has failed, in a way that has undermined public safety.

No wonder Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, Chief William Bratton's No. 2 in command, says top LAPD officials would be open to the idea of changing it.

For that, he's likely to draw plenty of flak - both from the police union and the mayor it bought for the price of an endorsement.

But the purpose of law enforcement isn't to placate special interests and politicians, it's to fight crime, just as the purpose of a municipal government is to serve the public, not the special interests.