OUR NEIGHBORS AT WAR. Kosovo, DeKalb, Baghdad and return.

Donald Grady, the chief of the NIU Police Department, will depart for Washington, D.C. this weekend to be briefed before he is deployed to Baghdad in early October, where he will remain for the next year.

Best wishes, Chief, on your sabbatical."

I will still be intimately involved with everything that happens here at the department and at the university," Grady said. "I will continue to have daily interaction with the police department. We will hold daily conference calls, and I'll be checking and responding to e-mails."

And to a safe return.

"I'm concerned for him, because I don't want to see him go to one of the hottest areas of the planet," [Lieutenant Darrell] Mitchell said. "However, I'm also very proud."