Washtenaw County Sheriff Implements Changes to Policing with Positive Feedback

Elected last year, Sheriff Alysha Dyer finished her first 100 days in office on April 11 and has held to the plans she had proposed during her candidacy, including getting rid of ticket quotas, implementing mental health-focused programs in the Washtenaw County Jail and restructuring evaluation tactics for police officers.

“When I started working in the road patrol division here as an officer, because I was driving around every day, I really saw the needs of the community from the front lines,” Dyer said. “And being an officer that was working in a community where I grew up, I saw the significant need regarding things related to mental health, related to poverty, and I was also mentoring young people in our community. It helped to broaden my perspective on what is going to really help increase community safety from a root cause perspective.”

Dyer is happy with the impact some of her changes have had since taking office, and is receiving positive feedback from deputies as well, especially regarding the removal of traffic stop quotas.

“I have not heard any pushback from deputies around changing evaluation metrics in the conversations that we’ve had as a leadership team.,” Dyer said. “In fact, I think from the conversations I had, especially when we first started, a lot of the deputies agreed.”

Her priorities when running focused on allowing officers to focus on the most impactful parts of their job.

“There’s so many other parts to this job that need to be looked at as opposed to just the stops and tickets,” Dyer said. “To be clear: we are still doing traffic enforcement. I always like to say that, because some people were asking, ‘Does this mean that you’re not doing traffic stops anymore?’ No, we do traffic stops. However, we are leaning away from the nickel and dime petty stops, and we’re done with yelling at officers because they’re not meeting their numbers. That’s not what we do here.”

Dyer also emphasized the importance of connecting with the community as a Sheriff, including encouraging connections between the community and incarcerated family members.

“What they found in other areas is when you increase opportunities for people in jail to talk to their families, and when you increase opportunities to actually have that face-to-face contact, it actually helps to lower recidivism,” she said. “It improves the environment in the jail. It actually creates a safer environment for people in the jail and officers. And so that’s something that we are really excited about launching more formally right now. We are doing pilot programs. We did a mother and child movie night, and it’s going really well. We have not seen any issues. And that’s exciting, because I think the type of jail visitation we are going to incorporate here can really be a model in other areas.”

Starting in mid-May, Dyer will begin hosting “coffee chats” in local community spaces. These events will serve as an additional way for the community to connect with the Sheriff’s Office.

“Anyone can show up,” Dyer said. “It’s just an informal coffee hour chat where we talk about community issues, we talk about public safety, and I’m going to be inviting our local leaders in those townships to attend as well. And that’s what I really love doing, being out in the community and talking with folks.” Sheriff Dyer’s first community coffee hour will be at Manchester District Library, May 17 at 9am.