EDITORIAL QUESTIONS FOR BRATTON NEW CHIEF NEEDS TO SHARE HIS VISION IN PUBLIC AND ON THE RECORD.

OF all the decisions Los Angeles City Council members make, the most important - at least to the residents of the city - may be the selection of a police chief.

The council's record in this regard, as in most others, is poor. The past three chiefs - Daryl F. Gates, Willie L. Williams and Bernard C. Parks - ended their terms embroiled in controversies and left a Police Department in disarray.

On Friday, the council has the opportunity to do its due diligence in questioning Mayor James Hahn's choice for the next chief of police, William Bratton, a former head of police in New York City and Boston.

Nothing less than a full airing of all the issues, pinning Bratton down on specifics, will do.

This is particularly important for the five council members who serve districts wholly within the San Fernando Valley and the two whose districts cover parts of the Valley.

In the debate over Valley secession, the question of crime and the quality of police service has consistently emerged as the most important for candidates and residents alike.

And for good reason: No community is so underserved by the Los Angeles Police Department as the Valley. In fiscal year 2001, Los Angeles spent a mere $170 per capita on policing in the Valley, compared with $288 per person in the south side, $232 in the central area and $225 for the Westside.

Geographically, that amounts to about $1 million per square mile in the Valley - as opposed to $3.5 million per square mile in the city's southern section, $3.6 million in the central city, and $1.7 million on the Westside.

These questions need answering: What will Bratton do to fix the deployment system used by the LAPD that shortchanges the Valley?

What will he do about gangs that are the scourge of our neighborhoods?

What will he do to shorten the Valley's police response times, which are outrageously higher than anywhere else in the city?

What will he do to reduce the widespread fear of crime among Valley residents, even during those recent, happy days of falling crime?

What will he do about officer morale, discipline, the code of silence and all the other problems facing the LAPD?

There are dozens of other questions that Bratton needs to answer in public and on the record, not the least of which is: How can we be sure that the department is not going to become an arm of the mayor and the downtown power structure?

We would have liked to have asked Bratton these questions ourselves - and reported the answers - but the mayor barred him from coming to the Daily News for an editorial board meeting or even giving a Daily News reporter a face-to-face, sit-down interview.

That's a shame. It cheats Valley residents out of getting useful information.

For, on his record, there is much to admire in William Bratton, and good reason to hope he can restore the luster to the tarnished LAPD badge, carry out long-needed reforms and restore law and order to our streets and neighborhoods.

The council has a responsibility to the 3.6 million people of Los Angeles to make sure that Bratton is the right man for the job and to make sure that the public knows where he stands on all the issues, so that he can be held accountable for his performance.

The time to ask the questions - and judge the answers - is now.