by P.D. Lesko

Former Sheriff’s Office Dir. of Community Engagement Derrick Jackson had the money, the endorsements, the backing of the incumbent Sheriff and the fix was in: he was supposed to ease into former Sheriff Jerry L. Clayton’s office. Jackson was also saddled with steamer trunks of exaggerations, aggrandizements, lies about his professional accomplishments, lies about the awards he never won and the misfortune of having his credentials fackchecked (he was running for Sheriff, after all). Jackson lost to Alyshia Dyer in a three-way primary race where he had enough money that he should have been able to grind her into a fine dust and blow her away.

Alyshia Dyer had her own problems with the truth. She exaggerated her years of service, but she made an effort to come clean on her campaign website, even if she continued at campaign events to exaggerate her total years of policing to a decade from the half a dozen years (including work as a marine patrol officer) documented in her Michigan State Police records.

She didn’t win as much as Derrick Jackson was taken down by an offended licensed social worker who complained to the State about Jackson’s claims he is a “social worker.” He’s not. He earned a MSW from U-M, but he never took the required exam or completed the required supervised clinical work. Misusing the title “social worker” in Michigan is just as much an invitation for trouble as misusing the title “doctor” or “lawyer.” The State of Michigan sent Jackson a Cease and Desist Letter.

While she ran for office, Alyshia Dyer complained bitterly about the cronyism and corruption in the Sheriff’s Dept. She called Jackson a liar at one public campaign event. Jackson complained that the Ann Arbor Independent’s fack-checking was little more than an unprovoked attack on a Black man, an effort to tear him down. Derrick Jackson, instead of telling voters the truth and taking responsibility for his lies, had a deck of cards made, all of them printed with the word “race.”

Alyshia Dyer, the County Sheriff, is huffing and puffing up the hill, but she has gone off the rails and crashed.

She appointed a trio of administrative employees whom she was not legally entitled to appoint; she was required to post the jobs and hire for them. The Sheriff broke the law to appoint her former boyfriend to head the WCSO HR Dept. and to train new recruits. She handed the man a job, a man who had resigned from his deputy sheriff position while under investigation for progressive corrective action. Jeremiah Richardson’s academic record is lackluster, at best. He earned a Master’s Degree, but from a program where grad students are permitted to earn Es (Richardson earned Es in Accounting, Logic, History and a course in his Criminology major) . At the University of Michigan, if a grad student fails a course, that student is invited to leave the graduate program. The Dean of Rackham will come to your house, pack your bags, and wave you off from the bus station.

Isn’t the best way to rebuild a Sheriff’s Dept. steeped in corruption and cronyism to recruit, hire and retain the brightest and the best? Sheriff Dyer’s former boyfriend, who resigned in disgrace, is the brightest and the best? The Sheriff’s bar is set so low it’s on the floor.

Then a call came from an elected official. Someone (in HR?) at the Sheriff’s Dept. got the bright idea that Ardis Lewis, Jr. would make a great corrections officer and was background checking him.

Let me help. Court records show Ardis Lewis, Jr. was a deadbeat dad who went on to launch a gentleman’s club in Ypsilanti Twp. Men Like Us and Lewis were sued by the township as a public nuisance after two dozen police complaints in two years, including complaints about shootings and sexual assaults. Lewis stiffed his landlord out of tens of thousands in rent by telling the man Washtenaw County was going to give him a “grant.” Sheriff’s bar. On. Floor. This is Sheriff Dyer’s idea of recruitment?

Sheriff Dyer appointed a Dir. of Innovation and a Dir. of Operations, illegal appointments both, according to MCL 51.70 and MCL 51.71. Our County Sheriff is legally entitled to appoint one undersheriff and as many deputy sheriffs as she likes. She may not hand out job appointments like candy to her campaign supporters, and then use public money to pay her illegal appointees.

In an email, Dyer huffed and puffed in response to questions about her ex-boyfriend’s appointment, she wrote, “He now holds an appointed position — a decision I have full authority to make.” Um, actually, no. Dyer steamed on, “If anyone has concerns about my appointment spots, they are welcome to direct those questions to me as this was my decision, my staff deserve the ability to do their job as first responders without unnecessary political distractions. I have nothing to hide, and I’m going to keep working hard to improve our Sheriff’s Office alongside my phenomenal employees.”

No one need address their concerns about the Sheriff’s “appointment spots” to her. The County Prosecutor and the Michigan AG enforce the law the Sheriff broke to give political candy appointments to her ex-boyfriend and her campaign supporters.

Dyer’s defense of the indefensible is a gigantic disappointment given her campaign promises to clean up the corruption within the Sheriff’s Dept. Her illegal abuse of appointments is not a surprise given her lack of administrative experience, but it’s a huge disappointment nonetheless. And a giant red flag,