EDITORIAL OUTLAW CITY L.A. OFFICIALS TURN BLIND EYE TO LAWBREAKERS.

OBEYING federal law and joining the war on terrorism seem to be optional as far as City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is concerned.

And he'll have no part of either.

This is Los Angeles, after all, where City Hall has a long history of accommodating criminals while doing their best to make life miserable for hard-working, taxpaying, law-abiding people. Delgadillo's merely continuing a long tradition.

Last week, he announced that should the Bush administration ask local governments to help enforce federal immigration law, L.A. will not cooperate.

That's good news for terrorists who may be plotting the next Sept. 11 and who are often in the country illegally on expired visas. Immigration violations can give authorities a pretext to get dangerous people out of the country, but without the cooperation of L.A. government that should be considerably more difficult.

In Los Angeles, fighting crime is only one of many concerns, usually subordinate to other things, like politics.

Delgadillo's announcement was his way of demonstrating his commitment to Special Order 40, the 1977 directive barring police officers from stopping people for immigration inquiries. The reason, he said, for not enforcing federal immigration policies is that fears of deportation might keep illegal immigrants from cooperating with law-enforcement.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Rather than refusing to cooperate with Washington, Delgadillo could have offered to work with it, devising a program for pursuing possible terrorists without alienating thousands of other Angelenos.

Instead of doing the right thing, Delgadillo chose to make a statement, and the city and the country are both a little less safe because of it.

Following Delgadillo's lead is a City Council panel and the Los Angeles Police Commission, which are considering doing away with the high-speed car chases that have become a staple of L.A. daytime television. The reason for the change is the recent death of a 4-year-old girl, the result of a chain-reaction crash caused by a police chase.

Horrific though that tragedy and others like it are, what's the alternative? Clearly police need to use care and discretion in chases. But were the Los Angeles Police Department to adopt a no-chase policy, the message would quickly go out to all criminals: Escape the long arm of the law by stepping on the accelerator.

Extreme cases, it's said, make for bad law, and one terrible incident should not give way to bad policies that would make L.A.'s streets more dangerous for everyone.

We've been down that road before.

When abuses were discovered in the Rampart anti-gang unit, city leaders responded by dismantling much of the LAPD's anti-gang operations and tying the hands of good cops under a federal court consent decree engineered by the man who is now the mayor, James Hahn.

The result? Homicides are up 80 percent in the San Fernando Valley, and nearly 50 percent citywide, largely because of an increase in gang activity.

After handcuffing L.A. cops, city leaders now want to put the Denver Boot on their cars.

The goal seems to be making Los Angeles the most criminal-friendly city in the country, and the most dangerous, too - for the law-abiding.