EDITORIAL SELF-PROTECTION LEAGUE POLICE UNION PUTS ITS OWN INTERESTS OVER PUBLIC SAFETY.

NOW we know what the Police Protective League protects - itself.

Protecting the residents of Los Angeles seems to rank a distant second priority.

Last week, City Councilman Dennis Zine proposed an innovative solution to the Los Angeles Police Department's critical shortage of officers. To make up for the shortfall, he said, the city should contract supplemental patrols from the county Sheriff's Department.

It sounded like a reasonable idea if the sheriff has enough deputies to spare in order to help make L.A.'s streets safer.

The LAPD is down 1,110 cops from its authorized strength, which has resulted in slower response times and increased crime. The Sheriff's Department, which already provides service to 41 other cities in the county, could play a vital role in making L.A. safer.

If nothing else, the idea merits a closer look.

To that end, Zine has proposed a pilot program. For 120 days, deputies from the Lost Hills sheriff's station in Calabasas and the Hollenbeck station in South Central would expand their patrols to include portions of Los Angeles.

At the end of the trial period, the city could evaluate the project and see whether it should be continued, perhaps even expanded, or scrapped altogether.

But the modest proposal drew the immediate ire of the PPL. Union officials, who took a momentary break from their usual carping about LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks, condemned Zine's suggestion as a slap in the face to the LAPD rank and file.

That's a hard line to swallow.

While there are, to be sure, some die-hard LAPD haters in City Hall, Zine is hardly one of them. He was a longtime LAPD sergeant and formerly a PPL director.

While he shares the PPL's goal of ousting Parks, he at least has offered an idea for a short-term solution to the shortage of officers.

The PPL, in contrast, has only one solution: more overtime.

That's not much of an answer since the LAPD already is spending a fortune for overtime because of anti-terrorism needs and the PPL successfully won the three-day workweek on the claim that officers needed more time off to spend with their families, not more money.

Finding a real solution to the LAPD's staffing problems clearly will take awhile. City Hall has long been baffled by the recruitment and retention problem, and even if it came up with a solution tomorrow, it would still take years to hire and train enough new cops.

The safety of L.A. residents in their homes and neighborhoods should be the No. 1 issue.

After a decade of scandal and demoralization, City Hall needs to come up with real solutions, and in a hurry, before the current increase in crime becomes a tidal wave of lawlessness.