In Washtenaw County, there’s a new pansexual sheriff in town.

Alyshia Dyer was sworn into office on Tuesday on a promise to bring big changes to the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office modeled after progressive policies implemented in Ann Arbor, though she doesn’t officially take over until January, MLive reports.

Dyer prevailed over two fellow Democrats in the August primary by 400 votes, before winning unopposed in November, making her both the first woman and first pansexual to lead the department of roughly 420 staff and 120 sworn officers.

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“This campaign wasn’t about me – it wasn’t about one person,” Dryer said Tuesday. “It was about all of us coming together to imagine something better in Washtenaw County.”

Dyer openly identifies as pansexual, which is defined as an individual is the “sexual orientation of someone who is romantically, emotionally, or sexually attracted to people of any gender identity, gender, or biological sex,” according to the website Dictionary.com.

Dryer worked for the department for years beginning in 2012, as a youth resource officer involved in the county’s Handle with Care school program, and SURE Program that helps parents with children in the criminal justice system, according to the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

She moved to the City of Detroit’s Department of Civil Rights, Inclusion, and Opportunity in 2020, working with Mayor Mike Duggan’s Equity Council on cash bail and poverty issues. More recently, Dryer has worked as a therapist and social worker as she pursued advanced degrees from the University of Michigan.

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As a road patrol officer for a decade, Dryer “witnessed firsthand how mismanagement put workers’ lives at risk and harmed children,” according to her campaign website. “These experiences led her to leave the Sheriff’s Office road patrol division and pursue higher education.”

Along the way, Dryer won several community engagement awards and other accolades, the most recent coming in 2022, when The Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice bestowed Dryer with its Anti-Racist Advocate Award.

“We must acknowledge the flaws in our system rooted in colonial histories that often promoted using our legal system for racist, classist, and sexist practices which we are still grappling with as a profession today,” Dryer said Tuesday, according to WEMU.

Dryer is already soliciting members for new community policy teams that will vet potential changes that prioritize inclusivity and social justice. She plans to bring back in-person jail visitation, and create a unarmed community crisis response team to “deescalate potential threats with trained personnel,” Michigan Daily reports.

“The more we can have diverse teams of thinkers and different people from across the county involved, the more that we effectively create good policy,” Dyer told MLive.

Other top priorities listed on her campaign website include strict limits on solitary confinement, a gardening program at the county jail, creation of a “Corporate Accountability Crimes Unit,” installing LGBTQ+ affirming policies, an end to “unnecessary traffic stops and ticket quotas,” and measures to “protect our environment.”

“Alyshia has supported Drive Michigan Forward to advocate for undocumented people to be able to get driver’s licenses, signed on to national policy recommendations to protect immigrants, will take hate crimes seriously, and will ensure proper training and policies are in place so our local Sheriff’s Office is not collaborating with ICE,” her website reads.

Much of the focus, she told WJBK, will be on equality and youth.

“We were routinely seeing Black children coming in and out of our legal system much more than white children,” she said.

One of Dryer’s first orders of business will be to expand policy in Ann Arbor that restrict officers from stopping vehicles for minor offenses to the entire county.

“It doesn’t mean we’re not going to pull people over,” Dyer told WJBK. “What it means is, we’re not going to pull people over for the petty stuff – you know, the crack in the windshield – the loud exhaust – the stuff that’s really related to income.”

“I think a lot of folks are starting to see, because of the work that got implemented in Ann Arbor, how important this is to establish community trust, especially in times when trust between the community and law enforcement can be challenging,” Dyer told MLive.

She’ll also focus heavily on mental health supports for officers.

“Making sure that officers really have the tools that they need to take care of themselves,” she said. “Because we can’t expect law enforcement to respond to these really tense calls for service and make responsible decisions when they’re working sleep-deprived and they’re not being prioritized as well.”