EDITORIAL HUMPTY DUMPTY RIORDAN'S MOVE MAY BE TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.

CAN all the mayor's horses and all the mayor's men put the LAPD back together again?

That's the question raised by Mayor Richard Riordan's abrupt firing of Police Commission President Gerald Chaleff, who tried to walk the line between anti-cop civil libertarians and ordinary citizens worried about their safety.

Since the Rampart Division scandal became public 18 months ago, L.A.'s leaders have dithered on how to cleanse the Los Angeles Police Department of its code-of-silence culture and its cadre of problem officers who trampled on the rights of drug dealers, gang members and, in some cases, law-abiding people.

The more they dithered, the worse officer morale got. So more officers quit the force and fewer would join. Chaleff, the City Attorney's Office and the City Council wanted reform at any price, even surrendering authority to the federal government.

Riordan justifies Chaleff's firing by making the point that fighting crime, recruiting more officers and providing leadership to the community no longer are paramount. Hiring full-time commissioners, banning Boy Scout programs, and handcuffing officers are at the top of the agenda.

We have warned for a year that pillorying the 9,000 good cops because of the misconduct of 100 bad cops would give hoodlums of all types a license to steal and break the spirit of the rank-and-file cops.

And that is exactly what has happened: A crime wave has hit the city and the cops aren't doing anything about it. Crime is up sharply, arrests are down sharply.

Los Angeles is a fractured city at odds with itself.

Our elected leaders can't plan, can't make decisions and can't stop the city from falling apart.

Whether Police Chief Bernard C. Parks has enough credibility and energy left to put the LAPD back together remains to be seen.

Riordan dillydallied too long enough before asserting control. Now, he's made Chaleff the fall guy and put the burden on Parks to pull off a miracle cure.

But the issue isn't Chaleff or Parks or a few bad cops. It's creating an effective discipline system. It's engaging issues of police morale and restoring pride back to the department that's been sliding downhill for a decade.

Combined, Riordan, the City Council, Parks, the Police Commission - they're all symptomatic of what's broken at City Hall.

Even as the council spends $300 million on its Temple of Doom, restoring a City Hall that doesn't represent all of Los Angeles, its members fail to lead and provide answers for the city's crushing problems.

Riordan's made a move, but now he needs to reach out to all segments of the public and use his political capital and what remains of his time in office to bring the city together.

If Riordan wants to leave a legacy that helps heal L.A., he needs to bring the public along with him as a partner. Time is running out.