Enough. At some point, Northern Illinois University has to draw the line with its police chief.

Donald Grady’s level of paranoia appears to have reached a fever pitch.

The empirical reign of NIU’s contentious head of Public Safety has reached the point that his continued presence as police chief compromises the well-being of this university.

He must be removed.

Since coming to DeKalb in 2001, Grady has established himself as a polarizing figure who ignores other police departments, often shuns the media and uses intimidation tactics to expand his power within the administration.

Throughout his NIU tenure, Grady operated his police department without open opposition and any glaring failures. Until this past summer.

On July 14, NIU police officer Dexter Yarbrough resigned.

Yarbrough, a former Colorado State University police chief hired on June 29, became the subject of scrutiny when both local and national media brought to light his previous transgressions at CSU, which included accusations of sexual harassment and remarks he made to a classroom full of students, telling them it was acceptable for police to pay informants with drugs.

His resignation simultaneously became a source of tremendous embarrassment for the university while finally piercing Grady’s seemingly impenetrable armor.

The Yarbrough incident, it seems, was the fatal blow to Grady’s psyche.

Some university administrators — even ones above Grady in NIU’s distorted hierarchy — confided to the Star their own tales of run-ins with the hostile police chief.

Stories of Grady screaming and being described by those on the receiving end of the tirades as “crazed” and having “lost it” are growing horrifically commonplace among university employees from all walks of campus.

One official even described him as “not fit to be a police officer.”

Grady’s desire to undo his judgmental error in hiring Yarbrough was so great he went as far as to bring the Star’s editor in chief into his office and dangle the possibility of post-graduation employment in exchange for a glowing retraction of the Yarbrough story, while similarly implying a negative outcome as a result of refusal.

Unlike him, and unfortunately for Grady, we understand our true purpose: serving the public.

Grady is, in his own mind, infallible.

This logic is largely the reason NIU Police and the DeKalb Police Department have bickered like children for years, as Grady shuts out all other police agencies and won’t even converse with DeKalb Police Chief Bill Feithen.

His battles with fellow police departments are just puzzling; his battles with the media are simply frustrating.

For years, Grady has had the University Police operate under a policy of forcing media to file Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain material any sensible, legitimate police agency — such as DeKalb’s — will readily provide to the media in the interest of informing the public.

Grady’s hatred toward the DeKalb Daily Chronicle is such he won’t even allow the department to converse with other papers owned by the same company, much less the Chronicle itself.

According to NIU’s online police blotter — which is about the best we can do when it comes to giving you any news about crime on campus — most all offenses are resulting not in arrests, but in judicial referrals.

But the offenses of Grady’s regime go well beyond sugar-coating numbers.

Feb. 14, 2008, was a day of unspeakable tragedy and heartbreak on this campus.

For Grady, it was a day to shine his medals and soak in the national spotlight.

“Clothes. He was wearing clothes,” Grady responded at that night’s press conference to the question of what the shooter had been wearing.

When asked what the hardest part of the day had been, he responded, “Dealing with the media.”

Yes, Chief Grady. You hate the media. You especially hate anyone who dares question your authority.

You’re tough. We get it.

NIU has yet to release an official report on the shootings. Grady told the Star no such report exists, nor will one be released.

The only report is Grady’s “personal notes” on the incident, which he doesn’t plan to make public.

Not yet, at least. After all, why divulge your intimate knowledge of the events of that day to soothe the still shaken hearts of the victims’ families when you can keep it to yourself simply to tease all the people who keep asking for it?

Grady would have you believe that he is a victim.

That he is a hero under attack because the world has it out for him. How do we know this?

It’s a pattern that’s followed him his entire career.

He’s traveled the world and held a number of police positions across the country, almost all of which have resulted in Grady getting shown the door under a cloud of controversy where he believed he was being victimized.

The only constant in this changing equation is the esteemed police chief.

Grady started in 1979 at the Rock County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin.

He sued the county and Sheriff Joe Black in federal court in February 1986, claiming he had been passed over for a promotion because of his race.

He was promoted to sergeant in 1986 and reached an out-of-court settlement with the county for $45,000 — well short of the $160,000 in damages he was seeking.

He soon left Rock County and has never elaborated why.

In 1994, he became police chief in Sante Fe, N.M. Grady’s militaristic approach was not well received in the Southwest, as he was ultimately ousted by the police union in February 1996 by way of a 103–5 no confidence vote.

City councilman Frank Montano in 1995 told The New York Times Grady lacked “the skills, experience and cultural sensitivity necessary to lead the Sante Fe Police Department.”

Grady retorted by saying dissenting officers in the mostly-Hispanic community said “incompetent” when they meant to say “black,” according to the Times’ article.

Current Sante Fe Sheriff Greg Solano said in his personal blog “to this day the bitterness over Chief Grady is such that every chief’s photo hangs in the police station except Chief Grady’s. Whenever one is put up to replace the missing one, it goes mysteriously missing.”

It’s impossible for us to say if race was a factor in Grady’s departure from his previous jobs.

But when it comes to here and now at NIU, it’s not about race — it’s about a man who simply is no longer fit to be responsible for the safety of this campus.

If Grady is responsible for all this strife, who is responsible for Grady?

When is his boss, Eddie Williams — described by one NIU official as Grady’s “guardian angel” — going to put a stop to all this? Is he too stubborn in his desire to protect his friend? Is he afraid?

Can it be that one man has become bigger than the university itself?

Donald Grady has worn out his welcome everywhere he’s gone, and NIU is no different.

It’s time to put an end to this mess. It’s time for a change.