Shawn Dyball | Kiernan Group Holdings

Shawn Dyall
Senior Instructor

Ms. Shawn Dyball retired at the rank of Investigator from the Orange County (CA) Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) in March, 2013 after 32 years of service. She worked a variety of assignments during her career, and helped found and staff the Orange County Terrorism Early Warning Group (TEWG) from 2002 – 2013 (now the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center (OCIAC)). As the investigative liaison, she was the primary terrorism and intelligence investigator post-9/11 for the OCSD. As part of her ancillary duties, Ms. Dyball gained expertise in various aspects of Emergency Management, including operational experience participating table-top and full-scale exercises with the Emergency Operations Bureau.

Ms. Dyball was assigned as the Orange County liaison to the Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), in Norwalk, CA, one of six DHS designated State and Urban Area Fusion Centers in California, from 2008 – 2013. She worked primarily with the Tips and Leads unit, evaluating all reported information for a direct or implied terrorism nexus, as well as conducted training on fusion center resources to military, state and local intelligence units throughout the state. Ms. Dyball was also liaison to the Jail and Prison Radicalization Unit, which focused on violent extremist radicalization activity in custody and correctional facilities and local mosques. She assisted in training development for local and state custody, corrections, probation, and parole personnel on the importance of recognizing and reporting indicators of radicalization and potential indicators of terrorism related activity among the inmate population. With the passage of California Assembly Bill (AB) 109 in 2011, which allowed non-violent state prison inmates to be housed in county jail facilities, Ms. Dyball was instrumental in creating necessary revisions to collection requirements for the JRIC seven-county area of responsibility (AOR). She de-veloped a program, implemented by the OCSD in 2013, to create a Custody Liaison position at the JRIC. The Custody Liaison Officer ensures jail personnel receive relevant training and information, resulting in increased reporting of potential extremist and radicalization activity to the JRIC.

Ms. Dyball was assigned to the Inter-Agency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group (ITACG), housed in the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in Washington, D.C. from 2010 – 2012. She was one of 10 state, local and tribal agency detailees tasked with assessing classified and unclassified information and intelligence, recommending relevant and valuable information be released to state, local, tribal, territorial and private sector (SLTTP) first responders and partners. The ITACG collaborated on several stand-alone products designed to help keep first responder agencies informed on changing tactics, trends and techniques of terrorist operators overseas and in the U.S. Ms. Dyball also initiated and managed a project working with the FBI National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF), Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and other state and local representatives to address training and information sharing gaps between local, state and federal correctional communities with respect to violent extremist radicalization and activity. She worked to develop a standardized awareness level curriculum for state and local corrections personnel to provide information and training on inmate radicalization to violence and terrorism-related activity. In addition, the proposed training curriculum addressed reporting protocols and resources available to the correctional community. For her work on this project, Ms. Dyball was awarded the Exceptional Achievement Medal by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), one of the intelligence community’s highest honors.

Ms. Dyball is a graduate of the California Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Master Instructor Development Program (MIDP), where she developed a ground breaking 40-hour course for California POST: Terrorism Liaison Officers’ Role in School/Community Networking. This course was instrumental in bringing fire and law enforcement first responders together with school administrators and staff to collaborate on terrorism preparedness planning for schools. Since completing the MIDP in 2005, Ms. Dyball has developed, or has assisted in the development and instruction of a variety of training courses, including: Law Enforcement Response to Terrorism; Terrorism Preparedness for Schools; Active Shooter Awareness, Prevention and Response for Schools; Human Trafficking Resources for Law Enforcement; Burglary Patterns, Trends and Problem-Solving for Investigators; Pre-Incident Indicators of Terrorism; Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness; Chemical Weapons Threats to Schools; and more. She has presented terrorism and active shooter focused training to audiences at conferences and symposiums throughout the country, and has participated in the development and evaluation of field training exercises involving response to both active shooter and mass hostage siege situations.

Ms. Dyball currently focuses on instruction/facilitation, course design and instructor development, collaborating with the South Bay Public Safety Training Consortium (based in San Jose, CA) and the Los Angeles Police Department Detective Training Unit (LAPD DTU) as an instructor, as well as the Regional Training Center (RTC) (based in San Diego, CA) as an instructor and course designer/developer. Ms. Dyball currently facilitates the following courses in what is now the four-level POST Instructor Development Institute (IDI): the Academy Instructor Certification Course (Level 1), the Advanced Instructor Course (Level 3) and the Master Instructor Certification Course (Level 4) for the RTC and the South Bay Public Safety Training Consortium in San Jose, CA.

Ms. Dyball has a Bachelor of Science degree in Liberal Studies from Excelsior College – University of New York, (Albany), and earned a Master of Professional Studies degree in Homeland Security from The Pennsylvania State, University. She is currently enrolled in the Master of Education: Adult and Continuing Education program at Rutgers University, where she plans to specialize in Educational Technology.