EDITORIAL GANG CZAR NEEDED STRONG LEADERSHIP REQUIRED TO FIX UNCOORDINATED, UNDERFUNDED AND INEFFECTIVE EFFORTS.

IMAGINE trying to cook a single Christmas dinner with 20 chefs in 20 kitchens -- and none with any idea what the others are doing or enough ingredients to produce anything worthwhile. The result is likely to be a disaster.

That's exactly how Los Angeles has gone about dealing with the city's serious gang crime problem. And the result, of course, has been a disaster.

Los Angeles scatters a paltry $26 million a year on various anti-gang programs and efforts. There are prevention programs to get kids before they join gangs, and there are intervention programs to get kids after they've joined gangs. There are police gang-fighting teams. There are 26 gang injunctions. And there are lots of other disconnected and equally ineffective efforts in place.

Earlier this year, the city hired civil-rights lawyer Connie Rice to figure out what resources exist and how well they are doing. The results of this study are expected out early next year.

The certainty is that she will sharply criticize the muddled and failed approach to the gang problem and offer a host of solutions.

What's needed first and foremost is a gang czar.

The concept of appointing one person to manage all of Los Angeles' multiple, though disconnected, anti-gang resources is not a new idea. But it is one that's gained currency recently among the city's top crime fighters. And it is the right time for it.

The Los Angeles Police Department already knows that coordinating resources helps fight gangs. In light of the alarming trend of racially motivated killings and the overall increase in gang violence in the San Fernando Valley this year, the LAPD has reached out to the FBI, youth clubs and community groups for help.

Having one person accountable for the city's many tools in the struggle against gangs is not just a good idea, it's essential.

True to its usual practices, City Hall has played politics with the gang issue for decades, even as thousands of lives have been lost. City Hall never provides enough money or leadership into into eliminating L.A.'s single biggest crime problem.

City Councilman Tony Cardenas and Police Chief William Bratton have both suggested the czar idea. It's time the rest of the city's leaders, including and especially Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, start getting serious about this problem.

To be sure, there's no magic bullet to suppressing gangs and gang crime in Los Angeles. The schools, churches, neighborhoods all have a role to play along with the police, probation officers and others who routinely deal with aspects of the problem.

There's no secret about what must be done. The gang culture must be destroyed, and that means a total and well-coordinated community effort to provide jobs, activities, education and hope to the thousands of youths who join gangs every year.

And that will never happen without strong, effective and coordinated leadership pulling together the entire retinue of anti-gang weapons available.