The Los Angeles Police Department has spent hundreds of millions of dollars fulfilling the requirements of the federal court order imposed in the wake of the Rampart scandal.

The agency has built a system to monitor officer interaction with the community, to encourage public assessment and track complaints, and it has created a sometimes uncomfortable transparency - most recently in the financial disclosure policy forced on gang and narcotics officers this year that the police union fought.

The time and money Los Angeles invested in the consent decree reforms has paid off.

A study by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University released last month, which was commissioned last year by Police Chief William Bratton, found the once-reviled LAPD now has an approval rating that would make President Obama jealous - 83 percent. And, perhaps more importantly, the study noted that in the last decade, the department has greatly diversified its ranks to one that demographically more closely resembles the city it polices.

We urge Judge Gary Feess, who is set to consider extending the consent decree on Monday, to acknowledge the tremendous change in the department since 2001 and let the consent decree expire on June 16.

It has accomplished the reform intended when the city's leaders agreed to the restrictive - and costly - requirements. The LAPD is ready to police itself again.

Even the ACLU, which is recommending a three-year-extension for the order, has conceded that there has been impressive change at the LAPD. The organization doesn't think that's enough to free the department from its federal court bonds. We do.

Some might point to the May Day melee two years ago as evidence that the LAPD is still the same 20th-century department, still prone to excessive force and violating the rights of minorities. On the contrary, the incident was a notable turning point for the department. Instead of justifying or sweeping officer misconduct under the table, Bratton reacted swiftly and strongly - even firing a deputy police chief - to demonstrate intolerance for that kind of behavior.

The LAPD isn't perfect. And, like any government agency, will probably never be. But it is a better agency - one that has met the conditions of the consent decree and now seems to be managing its problems just fine.

It's time for the shackles to come off. Free the LAPD.