ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — More than a decade and $40 million later, the Albuquerque Police Department is officially done with the Department of Justice. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the Court Appointed Settlement Agreement, or CASA, Monday ending federal oversight of APD.

The ruling comes days after the City of Albuquerque and the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the remaining portions of the CASA. It was put in place in 2014 after a DOJ investigation showed a pattern of officers using excessive force.

Those were dark days in the city as protests came after a string of controversial police shootings. The final straw was the deadly shooting of James Boyd, a homeless man camping in the foothills. His death led to public outcry.

Under the watchful eye of the DOJ, APD has undergone new training emphasizing constitutional policing, meaning treating suspects equally regardless of race or gender, restructured multiple divisions for more supervision and oversight, appointed a superintendent to oversee officer discipline, expanded community outreach, and made its data available to the public to increase transparency.

“This is thousands and thousands of monitored, accounted for paperwork demonstrating compliance,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said. “This is millions and millions of dollars of outside experts validating that the work was done and this is also a judge agreeing with that.”

City leaders are celebrating the milestone, and said it’s because of years of hard work. But others are hesitant, especially after hearing what the president of the Police Officer’s Association said about the oversight coming to an end. Shaun Willoughby told KOB 4 in April that a lot of officers only complied with the new training and regulations to keep their jobs.

“These officers have been dealing with this consent decree for more than a decade and it’s going to take time to train a lot of this craziness out of them,” Willoughby said.

City leaders don’t want all the hard work to be for nothing. Both Mayor Keller and APD Chief Harold Medina said the culture of the department is completely different than when the DOJ stepped in, and just because the department is now free to run itself, the work isn’t finished.

“We should always be looking (at) how are we going to get better?” Medina asked. “How are we going to improve communications with the community? How are we going to reduce use of force? How are we going to ensure a bad incident doesn’t repeat itself?”

Medina also said he “hopes and prays” the future leaders of the department respect what they’ve built.