By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Years after retiring as a full-time cop and city administrator, Marion mayor David Mayfield has plunged back into part-time police work.

Mayfield, 72, now works part-time transporting prisoners for the sheriff’s office.

“I’m a jail deputy,” Mayfield said. “It’s just prisoner transports.”

If someone is arrested in another county on a Marion County warrant, the suspect is held in the arresting county’s jail until Marion County sends a deputy to pick up the suspect, Mayfield said.

When a Marion County judge sentences someone to prison, Mayfield delivers them to the El Dorado prison.

The position is on-call and the work runs in spurts. Last week he made trips to Shawnee County and Harvey County in one day, according to Mayfield, who spent 33 years as a policeman. He’d made another trip to Harvey County the day before.

“It just depends on if they pick somebody up or not,” Mayfield said.

He also takes prisoners to prison at El Dorado.

“When I took this guy the last time, the Johnson County sheriff’s office had brought one down,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield kept his law enforcement credentials current through 2013. He let them lapse two years after he retired as city administrator.

Since his credentials have lapsed, he has to recertify to work transporting prisoners. He has an option to take a shortcut.

“I’ll go back to the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center in February and take ‘the challenge,’ ” he said.

He will not have to take the full basic training course, but will need to pass a firearm and a 150-question written test.

Should he not pass, he’ll have to take KLETC’s basic training course.

Mayfield has known sheriff Rob Craft for many years because both worked for the Kansas Highway Patrol and were trainers at KHP academy.

“Rob Craft’s a good friend of mine,” he said. “We both did work at the training academy in Salina for several years.”

Mayfield conducted pursuit driving training and Craft conducted firearms training.

“Rob is actually the reason I came here,” he said. “He told me they were looking for someone for the police department.”