In a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Luken said the city's police officers and supervisors have achieved "outstanding results" and should be allowed to run the department as they see fit.

He said the requests and demands of Justice Department officials have become a nuisance to police.

"I don't see why we have to put our police department through this silliness," Luken said in an interview. "That's enough. Go find the terrorists or something. You don't have to do this in Cincinnati, Ohio." The court-appointed monitor who oversees the reforms disagreed with Luken's claim that the city is ready to cast aside its 2002 agreement with the Justice Department to overhaul the police department.

And civil rights lawyers who helped negotiate the agreement said the mayor's comments suggest that he isn't serious about meaningful change.

"It's delusional to suggest everything is fine and everyone should just go away," said Scott Greenwood, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Their goal is not to fix the department but to get out from under the agreement as soon as possible."

The reforms are part of a settlement reached more than two years ago involving the Justice Department, police, the city and civil rights activists.

The settlement consists of two separate agreements: a deal between the Justice Department and the city to reform the police department and a "collaborative agreement" dedicated to improving the relationship between police and African-Americans.

Although both agreements have come under fire from police and city officials, Luken's letter takes aim at the settlement with the Justice Department.

In that agreement, the city promised to change the way police officers do their jobs, from training policies to the use of physical force to the way supervisors track employee performance.

The terms of the settlement are supposed to last five years and can be lifted early only with the permission of U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott.

Neither Dlott nor Justice officials could be reached Tuesday. But Saul Green, the monitor Dlott appointed to oversee the reforms, said city officials cannot just walk away from the deal.

"It's a contract," Green said. "One side cannot unilaterally decide they are done."

In his letter to Ashcroft, Luken doesn't threaten to pull the city out. But he does ask the attorney general to bring his Justice Department lawyers back to Washington and to declare that the goals of the agreement have been achieved.

He cited several areas of improvement. Luken said:

• The deployment of Tasers has contributed to a decline in the use of physical force, chemical irritant and other methods of subduing suspects. He said city statistics show a 7.7 percent drop in use-of-force incidents compared to last year. Taser guns administer an electrical current meant to temporarily immobilize a suspect to allow police to arrest a suspect.

• The city has developed a fair system of fielding citizen complaints about officers and has seen a 2 percent drop in those complaints since 2003.

• The city soon will begin using a system of tracking officer performance to help stop unacceptable conduct.

But he said Justice lawyers continue to demand changes in police policies and procedures.

"Part of the problem is they keep nit picking," said Luken, who asked the Justice Department to come to Cincinnati after the riots. "It's time for them to declare victory and go home."

Green, however, said his quarterly reports show more work is needed. The most recent report, issued Oct. 1, noted progress in several areas but also urged police to do more.

The report found that police still were not in compliance in their reporting of the use of "hard hands" incidents and that police were not always warning suspects before using chemical irritant and, in some cases, were not properly documenting such use.

"Based on our reports, we have not found them to be in substantial compliance," Green said.

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E-mail dhorn@enquirer.com