Washtenaw County's new sheriff Alyshia Dyer has been in office since the beginning of 2025 and plans to use her past experiences in both public policy and social work to guide her through her term.
An Ypsilanti native, Dyer graduated from Eastern Michigan University and then served as a road patrol deputy officer for Washtenaw County for several years, as well as spending time as a therapist.
Dyer said those experiences, as well as growing up in Ypsilanti, have given her a first-hand connection to the community she now serves. Through her work, she said, she recognized a mental health crisis in the community, so she plans to use her background to find new approaches for the sheriff's office to provide support.
Q: What motivated you to pursue a career in law enforcement?
A: I grew up in Ypsilanti, and I had some positive and negative interactions with the police. Those interactions really solidified my desire to be an officer in the community, one that would really help people, especially young people in crisis. As a young person, I had challenges growing up, and it motivated me to go to Washtenaw Community College and enter into the criminal justice program. From there, I went to the police academy and was able to start working as a road patrol deputy at the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office. My work policing really highlighted for me the need for change in our legal system, more broadly, and also some things internally that I noticed when I was a deputy. One of the big focuses I've been trying to bring to the table is better officer wellness and mental health services. I always say, hurt people, hurt people, and when you have deputies and officers out there who aren't getting their needs met, it can put the community in harm's way, if they're not taking care of themselves. So, it's all really connected.
Q: How did that lead to you becoming the new Washtenaw County sheriff?
A: I started getting involved in organizing to really change the legal system. One of the big things I ran on is, I wanted to also bring back contact visits in the jail so families could stay connected, as well as focusing on making sure that we aren’t over-policing communities and causing harm. So, a lot of these experiences, losing young people I knew to gun violence and a host of other things, led me to get involved in organizing. I then went to school. I finished my undergrad at EMU, and then I went on to U of M to do public policy and social work. I became a therapist and decided to run for sheriff because I realized that as sheriff, I would have the ability to really make a lot of change internally for the deputies that I care about. The profession is hard, and being a sheriff that's really going to look out for employees and focus on their wellness and mental health, and then also externally in the community, making sure that we're doing a better job at serving the public and making sure that the legal system isn't causing unnecessary harm.
Q: How will your practices in social work and mental health impact your career as the sheriff?
A: It brings a unique lens to the table. One, being a more compassionate leader. Law enforcement is so militaristic, and it oftentimes creates an environment where people feel like they're walking on eggshells when they work in policing. With administration, there's always this tension. Being more compassionate with how I lead as a boss, thinking more broadly on how to really impact communities in a positive way. The easy thing to do, that the traditional legal system does, is, you have a crime, respond, you investigate, you send it to the prosecutor's office. They make a determination. When you bring a mental health approach to it, or more of a social work approach, you’re looking deeper, like why something happened and how you can prevent it. Looking at more front-end prevention is going to be really a unique fit for me to be able to focus on, given my background, and then also understanding that a lot of mental health crises in our community don't necessarily need to be handled traditionally. There are so many other resources out there. I'm a big supporter of the work that we're doing at the sheriff's office involving LEADD, which is Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Deflection. We have co-response, but also, there's so many times when there may be something going on when the police are not needed, and it's really a better fit to have a mental health responder or an unarmed responder show up to help address those needs. So, it's really figuring that out and finding the balance, so we are not criminalizing mental health and criminalizing poverty, and a host of other things.
Q: What are your top priorities, and how do you plan on restructuring the sheriff's office?
A: Employee mental health and wellness, improving public safety, and then, a big one right now is hiring because there are a number of things that I care deeply about that I want to implement, that make it really hard to do when we're severely understaffed. I also want to say anyone looking to work for a more forward-thinking sheriff's administration, we are definitely hiring for dispatch, because we do 911 services for the county. We're hiring in the jail, and let's say I want to bring back in-person visitation so families can stay connected; I need staff to be able to do that. So, it's really important that we also fill a lot of our vacancies, just because it's been harder to hire. And then road patrol — we're down deputies in the road patrol division, which then creates a situation in law enforcement where you have to work overtime a lot, and then people are tired, and then it's easier to get hurt, it's easier to make mistakes. So, it's kind of like a revolving door of increasing the likelihood that something dangerous might happen to the officer and to the community. Making sure that we get staffing up is going to be a huge priority for the first year. That way we can get to a more stable spot so I can start implementing more forward-thinking changes.
Q: What type of impact do you hope to leave on Washtenaw County?
A: I plan on actually running again. I'm going to be around for a while; I’m not just doing one term. I want to change the way that we think about public safety. Public safety is so much broader than responding to a call and doing an investigation. It's looking at economic justice. It's looking at systemic racism and classism in our legal system that has disproportionately impacted vulnerable communities. And it's also thinking through how to create a more compassionate police force and jail, understanding that the legal system was not built in a way that would center on compassion. The legal system, in a lot of ways, it was built on a foundation of racism, classism and sexism, and if I can do my best to push back on that and make it more humane, make it less harmful, make it more compassionate and really show that when you do that, we can also improve public safety, that would be a huge win.
One big thing I'm doing, is I'm reducing the unnecessary traffic stops, like the traffic stops for low-level offenses that are typically not related to safety. Reducing those stops helps to reduce trauma caused when people are stopped for really small-level reasons. And the more that we can do that, the more we're reducing trauma that policing could unintentionally cause. But I think at times too, we've seen plenty of examples where policing has been used as a tool to hurt communities. So, if we can do a better job at making sure that we are thinking more broadly about public safety and reducing some of the harm that we know, traffic enforcement, for example, can cause, I think that is going to do a lot to make sure we are being a positive champion in all communities, to make sure people can actually thrive.
If we can do this work, and do it effectively, and also show that crime is not skyrocketing like people might say it is, then I think that really sets the tone for the rest of the state and country to think bigger about how to solve problems. I think a lot of research backs up that using a public health approach to violence and thinking more broadly on how to keep communities safer, it actually works. It's my goal to make sure law enforcement understands that and takes that into account. We're still going to do our duties every day. We respond to 911 calls, we make sure people are safe, but also how we do it and how we operate really matters, and it's my goal to make sure that the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office is a leader in more progressive thinking when it comes to tackling some of our complex challenges in communities. Also just being more collaborative with the community and launching community-driven policy teams to focus on having the community partner with the sheriff's office to address things that they have identified as issues they care about for us to solve.
Q: How was your campaigning process, and how does it feel now to know that you secured this position?
A: A huge relief, [I'm] really happy, really excited. I love being sheriff so far. Granted, it's only been a week, but it's just so nice to shake up the role. I mean, historically, sheriffs are older white men, and being a woman in this environment, you add that perspective. But also, I'm young, I'm 34 years old. I went from policing to social work to now leading the sheriff's office, and I've built a great team around me, and I'm really excited to be able to do a lot of the things that I saw were problems when I was policing. I mean, the ability for me to put out a directive that says, "Hey everyone, we're no longer going to measure your success by how many tickets you write or how many stops you make." ... Sheriffs have a lot of independent authority because they get their power from the people, being that it's an elected position. So, there's a lot of ways that you can really change things that you see are a problem without having to, unlike other elected positions, I don't have to fight with the House or the Senate or all that stuff. I can just go forth. So, it's been really nice.
Q: If you could talk to yourself when you were a child, what would you tell her as motivation to keep moving forward?
A: I would probably say never stop fighting for things you believe in and trust and center courage, even when it's hard. There were a lot of people that said I could never win, I could never be sheriff, people aren't going to vote for a woman, or I'm too young. There were so many haters out there, and we proved them wrong. I think this is a testament, not just to me being sheriff, but to the overall grassroots movement that, when you believe in something and it's your passion, fight for it. Don't let other people tell you who you can and can't be in this world.
For her first year in office, Dyer plans to start with staffing, getting the right number of officers and support within the sheriff’s administration. Once things remain stable, she said, she will focus on new policies. She said the office is looking for more staff and hiring dispatch team members. County sheriffs in Michigan are elected to four-year terms.
