It’s been a busy year for Donald Grady.

Grady, chief of the University Police, officially returned this week from a tour of duty in Iraq that began nearly one year ago.

While overseas, Grady served as senior adviser to the Iraqi minister of interior. Grady’s role involved advising the minister of the interior on how to assist the Iraqi government in building a new police force that could sustain an able democratic institution, he said.

His role also focused on the continued development of civil defense, border control and immigration control.

“I had meetings with the ambassador and gave advice on how to make things more democratic,” Grady said. “I also did my best in preserving human rights and helping them in providing resources.”

In a place like Iraq, there’s no such thing as a normal day on the job.

“The area I was at was very dangerous, having rockets and mortars hitting the building on a close-to-daily basis,” he said. “The day I was supposed to leave to come back, we got hit. We’d go weeks and get hit twice a day. Sometimes, you’d have two or three a day, other times 30 a day. There are a lot of civilians working at that compound [the embassy where Grady was stationed] putting their lives on the line.”

Much of Grady’s daily routine was centered around meeting with Iraqi officials in an advisory capacity to assist them in using their resources in the most efficient manner possible, he said.

Grady – who was not summoned to Iraq, but rather specifically chosen by the American government to take on the task at hand – was still involved with the UP on a daily basis. Along with fulfilling his military duties, Grady participated in daily conference calls with his staff back at NIU.

The department’s three lieutenants rotated to fill Grady’s position during his absence.

“I didn’t leave [the UP] completely. I just reduced the number of hours I work here,” Grady said. “I consulted with them on everything.”

Grady, a Beloit, Wisc. native, served previously in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Kosovo before coming to NIU, where crime on campus dropped nearly 60 percent during his first year as chief of police.

Grady returned to DeKalb for good Sunday, and returned to work Monday morning.