Yarbrough to resign from NIU
By KATE SCHOTT – kschott@daily-chronicle.com
Dexter Yarbrough – the former police chief at Colorado State University who was recently hired as an entry-level police officer at Northern Illinois University – has resigned, according to a statement from the school.
"Northern Illinois University Department of Public Safety today announced the resignation of recent patrol hire Dexter Yarbrough," according to a written statement released Tuesday by NIU. "Yarbrough was hired by NIU Public Safety and began work with the campus police on June 29. He resigned his probationary position on July 14, 2009."
The university referred all requests for additional comments to NIU Police Chief Donald Grady, who was not immediately available for comment. NIU President John Peters is on vacation and did not plan to issue a statement, according to a university spokeswoman.
He resigned in March as chief of police and associate vice president for public safety at Colorado State in Fort Collins after a three-month internal personnel investigation. He also had been the subject of an earlier investigation in 2008 regarding statements about the nature of police work he reportedly made while teaching a class at CSU.
NIU Police Chief Donald Grady defended the hire to the Daily Chronicle last week, saying Yarbrough passed a flurry of requirements, tests and background checks and was clearly the best candidate for the job.
"He has no arrest record, no criminal history, no traffic violations," Grady wrote in a July 2 e-mail to the Daily Chronicle. "He is well-spoken, articulate, empathic and reverent of different races and cultures. He talks of sharing the vision and ideologies espoused by this department and practices that are reflective of sound, rational and compassionate policing. His background revealed no verifiable or substantiated disqualifying factors."
No criminal charges were filed in Colorado against Yarbrough. But his tenure there was marked by at least two internal personnel investigations into his conduct, according to CSU officials.
The school undertook an internal investigation in early 2008 after a student taking a class taught by Yarbrough provided recordings of Yarbrough's lectures in which he appeared to tell students that police sometimes need to break the law to catch criminals, according to the March 17, 2009, edition of the Coloradoan, a daily newspaper in Fort Collins.
Other Colorado media outlets reported that Yarbrough was also recorded as saying it was OK to give police informants illegal drugs as payment for information, that police sometimes need to lie or cut corners and that excessive force may be needed at times against suspects.
The second investigation was prompted by a sexual harassment complaint filed Dec. 10, 2008, by a subordinate of Yarbrough's to the school's Equal Opportunity and Diversity Office, according to the March 17 Coloradoan.
CSU officials would confirm only that Yarbrough had been the subject of a personnel investigation, and a Colorado state police agency that assisted in the recent internal inquiry referred calls to the university.
But media outlets in Colorado found, through open records requests, that Yarbrough was put on administrative leave in December 2008 nine days after a sexual harassment complaint was filed against him by a subordinate.
