Now as the Greene County Sheriff, Anger may be using his pen a lot more, as he takes on the challenges of recruitment, retention, training and building a new jail for his department of 138 Sheriff’s Office staff.
Over the next year, Anger’s focus is on recruiting good candidates for positions across the department, and finding individuals who do “the right things for the right reasons.”
He also has a focus on maintaining the professionalism of the department by updating protocols and training software, and addressing the ongoing need for a new county jail. Voters struck down a levy in November that would have funded a replacement for the aging jail, though county officials have maintained that the jail and sheriff’s office must be replaced.
“The state of those facilities has to be addressed,” Anger said. “My role would be from the operations side. My staff and I are going to continue to meet with (commissioners) to go over the options that we have in deciding how to go forward.”
A Xenia native, Anger graduated from Xenia High School and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from Capital University. After serving six years with the Army National Guard, he became a full-time officer with the Xenia Police in 1987, and he served there for over 30 years.
In 2017, he became the director of the ACE Task Force at the Greene County Sheriff’s Office before becoming Chief Deputy in 2021 under Sheriff Gene Fischer, who passed away Nov. 16.
Anger’s various opportunities have helped him build trust and good relationships with organizations across the local, state, and federal levels, he said.
“The job as Sheriff is a point where you’re working with everyone in the county. So with all those experiences, I was able to build those good relationships with people throughout the county,” Anger said. “Collaborating with the FBI, the secret service, anytime we were working on major crimes in the county, just trying to make sure that we’re all allocating and using our resources to get the right outcomes.”
Anger has also served on the Greene County Mental Health and Recovery board for 11 years, and aims to integrate mental health initiatives into the correctional system.
“It’s to allow space for those issues to be handled, and for people to be plugged into where they need to go,” he said. “I have a law enforcement voice on the board, and at the same time I do more listening than talking, so it gives me a well-rounded insight on things outside of my world.”
Anger said citizens of Greene County will continue to have an excellent Sheriff’s office, and that his department will continue to be a strong advocate for victims’ rights.
“For me, it’s when somebody comes up to you, and maybe they had a family member pass away, and you stayed there, and they say ‘you didn’t have to do this, but you did.’ It’s the rewards from the little things,” he said. “This job gives us the ability to provide for people. So looking back when I’ve have had people remind me, something at that moment you weren’t thinking was a big deal, but for them it was a big deal.”
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