WASHINGTON (Map, News) - A cop pal of mine is working the midnight shift downtown a few weeks ago. He’s parked in his scout car having “lunch” at 2 a.m. He hears the grind of metal on metal. He looks back to see a car dragging its hub and shooting sparks.

Many cops would have gotten back to the business of eating lunch; my guy pursued.

He tells me, “I figured the driver needed help or might be a danger to someone and shouldn’t be on the road.”

The driver wouldn’t stop. My friend followed the car all the way to the D.C. line and finally made him pull over. Turns out it was a cabby whose car was in bad need of repair. But it could have been a bad actor packing drugs and guns.

“I gave him a traffic ticket and sent him on his way,” the cop says.

His reward from the Metropolitan Police Department? Disciplinary action for pursuing a vehicle against police department policies.

This story, together with many similar accounts, leads me to wonder if our police brass and their policies are still discouraging good cops from doing their jobs. Is “depolicing” still alive and well in D.C.?

A proud D.C. police department announced this week that it had successfully brought an end to Justice Department oversight. Since 2001, the feds, through an independent monitor (private legal team paid by D.C.) have had their fingers in every aspect of local policing from use of force during arrests to citizen complaints; from training to record keeping.

In announcing the termination, Justice extended its “heartfelt congratulations” for this “outstanding achievement.”

Some history: Former Chief Charles Ramsey in 2001 invited the feds to take over what he thought was a department out of control: too quick to use force and to shoot. The consent agreement had no termination date. One of its effects was to handcuff the cops and empower the thugs. Seven years later, the oversight has ended, for the most part.

“This is a tremendous victory for the city, for Chief Cathy Lanier, for the officers,” D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles told me. “You have the Department of Justice saying our training is a model for the nation.”

Kris Baumann, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police, says: “Nothing has changed. The effects are still with us. If you go out and make three arrests, you might have three use of force complaints made, and you are under investigation.”

Nickles allows that the balance between cops and citizens had “tilted back the wrong way” under DOJ control, “but now we are where we should be: Police have proper respect for citizens; people have respect for police officers who confront violent crime.”

Not from what I hear. Street cops still feel that every arrest puts them in jeopardy of getting a citizen’s complaint, which leads to disciplinary action. Officers tell me that doing paperwork keeps them chained to their desks. “Armed scribes,” Baumann calls them.

Even with federal control officially over, bad guys still can use the system against good cops, and internal controls are onerous.