He acted heroically during the mass shooting last year at Northern Illinois University, but NIU’s police chief has always been a bit unhinged, and students, with whom he has been abusive, want him out:
… [A]n editor of the campus newspaper [has] accused [Donald] Grady of threatening and shouting at him during an interview that became a three-hour tirade.
“It’s time to put an end to this mess. It’s time for a change,” the Northern Star student paper wrote in a blistering editorial calling for Grady’s removal. It accused him of employing intimidation to get his way.
School officials put the 56-year-old Grady on paid leave for 30 days starting last week while a panel reviews the allegations …
DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott is among the officials who have publicly backed the paper’s call for Grady’s ouster or resignation.
“NIU has isolated itself under his leadership,” Scott said.
… Controversy has dogged Grady, who also is from Beloit, Wis., during his career. After becoming Wisconsin’s first black police chief in the mostly white town of Bloomer in 1989, he created a stir by issuing nearly 300 tickets, including to himself, for violations of a snow-shoveling ordinance.
When he became Santa Fe, N.M., chief in 1994, he ordered officers to stop accepting free cups of coffee on the job and banned bolo ties.
Police responded with a 103-to-5 no-confidence vote in their boss. After digging in his heels for two years, Grady resigned, saying his reforms had encountered too much resistance.
And at NIU, well before the shooting, staff of the student newspaper had already complained that he often withheld standard crime reports, requiring the paper to file Freedom of Information Act requests…
October 16th, 2009 at 9:49AM
Text of the editorial is available from the Northern Star.
More local coverage, summary here
October 16th, 2009 at 10:40AM
Thanks, Stephen.