EDITORIAL POLICE TAX FRAUD LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES HAVE PLENTY OF MONEY FOR NEW OFFICERS.

WHAT a great time to want to be a cop!

The Los Angeles Police Department wants to hire 720 officers. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department wants to hire 900 new deputies to staff its reopening jails. The smaller police departments in Glendale, Burbank and elsewhere in the county are scouring the area for a few good men and women to join their forces.

With all this demand, the brightest candidates will be fought over like the prettiest girl at the prom.

Just six months after county voters rejected an increase in sales taxes to hire more officers, local law enforcement agencies are awash in money to achieve that goal - so much money that they can't find enough qualified candidates, and can't train them as fast as they can hire them.

It's a wonderful problem to have - at least for potential police officers. But it also belies all the alarmist gum-flapping last year by law enforcement officials who were willing to do and say anything to get the public to vote themselves a tax increase.

Los Angeles and every other local government are bouncing back from a long slump, thanks to the hot real-estate market pushing up property-tax revenue. With houses selling for astronomical prices, it wouldn't have been difficult to predict a recovery of the sort that's brought in $500 million more in revenue to the coffers for L.A. in the next fiscal year.

But that wasn't the story fed to the people. Back then, if voters didn't do the responsible thing in November and hand over money so that law enforcement agencies could hire more cops it wouldn't be long before packs of vicious criminals would take over their streets.

Voters wisely heeded their own growing distrust with government leaders who have spent public money with abandon, failing to seek efficiencies while spending yet always reaching out for hire taxes.

So Mayor James Hahn and Police Chief Bill Bratton came back with hopes of winning a sales tax just for the city of Los Angeles. The City Council, in a rare act of integrity, stopped that from happening.

The current scramble to hire more cops shows how hollow those pleas for more money were. Just days after the sales tax failed, Hahn suddenly came up with a plan to hire more police. And now Bratton is going to extra lengths to fill all the authorized cop spots.

Hopefully, local officials have learned a lesson. They have lost the public's trust, and until they win it back by putting the public interest first and doing a good job for the communities, they should not come back with their hands out, seeking higher taxes.