WREX.com – Rockford’s News LeaderNIU student newspaper calls for campus police chief to resign

NIU student newspaper calls for campus police chief to resign

By Samantha Ptashkin

DEKALB (WREX)- An article written by the editorial board of the NIU student run newspaper, The Northern Star, calls for campus Police Chief Donald Grady to step down. Grady has been in DeKalb since 2001 and was of course a big part of the police response during the 2008 campus shooting.

Now 13 News has confirmed he's on adminstrative leave while NIU reviews the allegations.

The Northern Star's editorial has some pretty severe accusations, claiming Chief Grady threatened a student journalist during an interview and promised to get him a job if he killed a story about a fellow officer, or wrote it in a more positive light. 

The editorial also claims Grady has been completely uncooperative with other police departments and the media and he's known for throwing tantrums. "I think it's a little exaggerated," said NIU Senior Mike Anderson. "I've met him in the past and he seemed pretty professional."

The article accuses Grady of blackmailing the editor in chief of the Northern Star, by "dangling the possibility of post-graduation employment" if the editor would not run an article about a campus officer who was under scrutiny for alleged comments he made to a class full of students about the sale of drugs. "Just going by the article alone I would have to agree with that," said NIU Freshman Richard Reed.

"Ever since the shooting and that type of thing we've been under a lot of police scrutiny and he's done a good job with it, he's managed to stay professional," Anderson said. 

A university press release says NIU will perform a review of Chief Grady. The process will take about one month.

13 News did try to contact writers from the Northern Star editorial board, but they did not wish to comment. The DeKalb Police Department, which has worked closely with Chief Grady in the past, also did not want to say anything. The NIU Police Department would only tell us he is on adminstrative leave.