One former Lawrence Police Officer was charged with a crime after pinning his wife to the couch during an argument. He lost his job, but then found work at a jail.

TOPEKA — In 2018, former Lawrence Police Officer Sutagee Anglin got into an argument with his wife, and she was worried he was going to become more violent.

She tried calling her daughter, hoping she and the two children in the home could get picked up and driven away from the situation, documents from the officer licensing board say. But that’s when Anglin took the phone out of her hand and held her against the couch so she couldn’t leave.

The incident would cost him his job as a police officer, but his career in the criminal justice system wasn’t over.

In December 2020, Anglin got a job as a corrections officer at the Shawnee County Jail making over $60,000 a year. That came over a year after the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training took away his law enforcement certification.

Former police officers can get these jobs because the system that licenses officers doesn’t oversee workers in jails and prisons. Those workers don’t need a license and some hiring requirements are left to the facilities. Advocates for criminal justice reform say that lets problematic people continue to stay in the criminal justice system.

The Shawnee County Department of Corrections said it doesn’t have a policy against hiring decertified police.

“All respective applicants go through the same hiring process,” said...

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