ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Raised in Ypsilanti, Alyshia Dyer aims to give back to the community that helped make her.
The former road patrol deputy and marine deputy is running to be the next Washtenaw County Sheriff, and believes that change must start at the leadership level.
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A graduate of University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University, Dyer has embedded herself in the community by serving as a therapist, social worker, patrol officer and community organizer.
The following interview was conducted via email.
In your opinion, what are some of the biggest issues the county faces? How do you intend to tackle these, if elected?
Mental Health and Public Safety Millage: Many members of our community have spoken up and rightfully demanded that funds from the mental health and public safety millage be used for mental health services. Unfortunately, the current Sheriff’s Office administration has used this money to buy boats, resurface floors, and even spend over $260,000 on rifles. While I support the millage, these issues have made it clear that greater transparency and accountability is needed from our Sheriff’s Office.
I support using a portion of the millage being used to fund community-led crisis response, in which non-police professionals, like social workers, mediators, and nurses, use their specialized training and skills to respond to situations that they are better equipped to handle for situations that don’t call for the police.
I also support funding from the mental health millage being used to support housing programs, especially those that provide equitable opportunities to returning citizens.
Gender-based Violence: Domestic violence survivors are often at risk of homelessness and need emergency funding to be able to relocate for their safety. Some survivors have support systems away from the area, but may not have access to the financial resources to leave due to financial abuse or poverty. To address this, I will create a Survivors-Based Justice Fund to ensure that survivors get the funds they need to relocate.
Confronting Fascism: When speaking with people in our community, many have also expressed serious concerns over national issues – specifically the rise of fascist political agendas.
Project 2025, the federal policy playbook from the Heritage Foundation and other pro-Trump organizations, mentions abortion 199 times, sending a clear signal that MAGA Republicans aim to use the criminal legal system to deprive people of reproductive freedoms. Their plan also calls for criminalizing educators who provide scientifically-accurate sex education, banning “transgender ideology” under criminal law, and deputizing local sheriff’s offices as immigration enforcement officers.
They expect local police to enforce these ridiculous laws–not on my watch.
I will not enforce any future state or federal laws that criminalize abortions, including those mentioned in Project 2025 that criminalize mifepristone. I will similarly not enforce any future state or federal laws that criminalize LBGTQ+ existence, including access to gender-affirming care. My platform calls for an end to the Sheriff’s Office’s existing cooperation with ICE; we will certainly not be adding to this by using our deputies as immigration enforcement.
Furthermore, I will continue to be a bold activist for reproductive freedom and other civil liberties and will use my platform as Sheriff in solidarity with progressive organizations to advance policy reforms beyond our local legal system.
What are some changes that you would like to see be made at the Sheriff’s Office?
As the only candidate to have served as a Washtenaw County Deputy Sheriff, I know from firsthand experience that improving the Sheriff’s Office starts with taking care of frontline workers.
Officers, who are frequently tasked with responding to mental health crises, often have mental health crises of their own, with PTSD being common in policing. I will work with the office’s Unions to create peer-led mental health programs to support workers.
Nationally, nearly half of police officers have fallen asleep while driving. Deputies at the Sheriff’s Office frequently work consecutive long shifts, often with limited sleep. As Sheriff, I’ll fix our scheduling system to prevent sleep deprivation and allow greater work-life balance for frontline workers.
Officers also must receive the training that they need to be successful. The Sheriff’s Office still trains deputies to use the Reid Technique, an investigation method from the 1950s that encourages lying to people suspected of crimes to get confessions. Providing officers with proper training—from this century—is crucial to protecting people’s rights.
The Sheriff’s Office’s current policy for immigration enforcement allows the office to hold people in our jail past their release date upon ICE’s request to assist in deportations. Data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University shows that this happened at least 125 times from 2008 to 2021, including at least 47 times during the Trump administration. As Sheriff, I will end this practice.
Organizations like the ACLU and Immigrant Legal Resource Center have noted this practice–which involves keeping people incarcerated without due process, a valid judicial warrant, or probable cause–violates the 4th Amendment rights of immigrants in our community.
Police departments that have kept people in jail on ICE’s behalf have lost lawsuits in federal courts and have had to pay expensive settlements, wasting taxpayer dollars.
Collaborating with ICE in immigration enforcement erodes trust of law enforcement in local immigrant communities.
Additional changes I would like to make include:
- Black people, who are 12% of Washtenaw’s population, have been stopped for 1,508 “equipment violations’' (like chipped windshields) in just 2024 alone. This is more than white people, who make up 70% of the population. As Sheriff, I’ll end traffic stops for equipment violations that don’t pose a safety risk to reduce racial disparities and allow deputies to focus on public safety issues.
- Despite being the largest County department, the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t appear in the 141-page Resilient Washtenaw Climate Action Plan. As Sheriff, I’ll protect our environment by enforcing laws against corporate pollution and reducing the Office’s carbon emissions.
- Right now, the Washtenaw County Jail has no in-person visitation; people who are incarcerated can’t even hug their children. When elected, I’ll bring in-person visitation back to the jail to keep families connected.
What do you love most about Washtenaw County?
This is the county that made me who I am today. As a child, I grew up in poverty and was raised by a single parent. Many organizations in Washtenaw County helped me be successful, and I love this community. This is a community where people do what they can all the time to help others. We work hard, we are engaged, and we fight for what we believe in. As a woman running for a seat always held by men, I might not be able to do this in another county that isn’t as favorable to strong women in leadership roles.
It is also a community where we can truly raise the bar on what to expect from our sheriff’s office given how open people are to change and forward thinking policy. Some of the initiatives I am passionate about starting at the sheriff’s office–such as a corporate accountability crimes unit focused on wage theft, tip theft, environmental crime, and fraud prevention–are possible because of the diversity in our community and the forward-thinking values we collectively hold.
We have rich universities here and I am honored to be an alumni from Washtenaw Community College, Eastern MIchigan University‚ and the University of Michigan. Many of our local universities and schools can help provide more opportunities to people returning to our community from prisons and jails. My goal is to work with our universities and groups led by people impacted by our local legal system to improve the ability for people to thrive when they are released from the county jail so we don’t have such high recidivism rates.
Washtenaw County believes in safety, restorative justice, rehabilitation, and embracing people’s differences regardless of politics. That is why I could not be more motivated to serve as sheriff here: to make sure we have a sheriff’s office that will, at the end of the day, put in the hard work to better our local legal system and truly put people first. It is because of my community here that what we are doing on this campaign is possible.
Learn more about Alyshia Dyer at her campaign website.
All About Ann Arbor reached out to all three candidates running for the position of Washtenaw County Sheriff with the same questions.