Bios

Sergeant Banning is the President & CEO of D∙Prep Inc .

Sergeant Elmo Banning is veteran officer with the Sacramento City Police Department. During his 28 year career he was assigned to a variety of positions. He served for over 10 years in the Patrol/Field Operations Division as an Officer and a Sergeant. He has an extensive investigative background and served over 18 years in the Detective Division, 13 of which as a supervisor in the Narcotic’s Division.

He has attended several specialized schools over the years and is a graduate of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration’s, Drug Unit Commanders Academy, located in Quantico, Virginia. The California Narcotic Officers’ Association has recognized him twice as the “Narcotic Officer of the Year”.

Sergeant Banning has been certified by the University of California at Davis to instruct Department of Homeland Security courses and is a certificated instructor for the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training.

Sergeant Banning instructed at the California State Department of Justice’s Advanced Training Center for over 17 years. Sergeant Banning instructed for a number of years at the Regional Counter-Drug Training Academy located at the Meridian Naval Air Station in Mississippi. Sergeant Banning is an adjunct instructor for Humboldt State University and for the State Center Community College District located in Fresno, Ca

Sergeant Banning presents DPrep’s Critical Incident Response Courses a national level and has taught throughout the entire United States.

In October of 2010, Sergeant Banning was selected to serve as an Advisory Committee Member to the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training and continues to serve in that capacity.

Sergeant Banning has been involved in a number of critical incidents as a first responding field supervisor and as the shift watch commander. He brings a unique perspective of education, professional instructor qualifications and real-life experiences to his presentations. Sergeant Banning retired in July of 2008 and now resides Sacramento, California.

Lt. JOHN KANE (ret.) Sacramento Police Department and Founder of D-PREP LLC. Lt. John Kane worked as a Police Officer in the City of Sacramento for almost twenty-seven years. During his career he has worked almost every assignment you can have as a police officer.
Lt. Kane has an extensive Military background. He was a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army at the age of nineteen and served in an Infantry Company with the 82nd Airborne Division in Vietnam from 1968 through 1969. He commanded a Military Police Company for almost five years in the Army Reserves; and was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. He was awarded the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal for Valor and was wounded in combat and holds two Purple Hearts.
Lt. Kane has both a Master’s and a Bachelor’s Degree from California State University, majoring in Criminal Justice/Government. He is currently an Associate Professor at Cal State Long Beach, teaching Emergency Planning and Management along with Leadership and Management classes in the Graduate School of Emergency Management. For twelve years he has been on the faculty of the Federal Emergency Management Agency – FEMA, as an adjunct instructor teaching at their Emergency Management Institute, in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He is a graduate of the National Fire Academy course as a Hazardous Materials Incident Commander, and the FEMA Incident Command System – Train the Trainers course, along with many other schools. He was chosen by FEMA in May 2000 to write the Terrorism First Response Lesson Plan for Law Enforcement that is now used to teach officers nationwide how to respond to a terrorist attack. Lt. Kane was a contributing author, along with several other nationally recognized instructors from FEMA, in a recently published book entitled, Terrorism: Defensive Strategies For Individuals, Companies And Governments.
He has served on the California Governor’s Committee of Law Enforcement Specialists in the Standardized Emergency Management System – SEMS, for over three years. While on this committee he helped to write and develop the book known as: The California Law Enforcement Guide for Emergency Operations. He also wrote the 2005 update project for this book. In March 2002, Lt. Kane was the single recipient of the most prestigious award in California for a law enforcement instructor: The Governor’s Award for Excellence in Peace Officer Training, for his work in Disaster and Critical Incident Response training.
Lt. Kane has commanded over fifty critical incidents and was the Incident Commander at the April 1995 Unabomber attack in Sacramento. After a five-year research project, he founded his own company, D-PREP, LLC. In 1996 he developed a four-day course entitled Disaster Preparation and Management. Lt. Kane is currently a senior instructor for the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security where he teaches Awareness and Response courses in the field of Agroterrorism.

Tom Sweeney is a retired Sacramento Police Department Lieutenant and the Division Director of the Hostage Negotiations / Internal Affairs Division of D-Prep, Inc. He spent 32 years with the Sacramento Police Department serving the Sacramento Community. During his career, Tom spent nearly twelve years as a Patrol Watch Commander; commanded the Special Investigations Division for three years; was the commander of the Sacramento Police Department’s hostage negotiations team; served as the back-up for the full-time SWAT commander; and spent over five years on both the Sacramento Police Officers Association and the Sacramento City Exempt Employees Association Boards, with a combined four years spent as Vice President at the two Associations. Tom has taught crisis negotiations response and management to hundreds of law enforcement officers and managers across the country. He is currently training and consulting on Crisis Negotiations, Internal Affairs, leadership, and other topics.

Jim Hyde was the Police Chief for the Antioch Police Department. He has 31 years of law enforcement experience with the Novato, Sacramento, Davis, and Antioch Police Departments. Chief Hyde has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from the University of South Dakota, a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology from the Professional School of Psychology, Sacramento. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Delinquency Control Institute. He is also a graduate of the Senior Management Institute for Police sponsored by the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the Police Executive Research Forum. Chief Hyde is a certified Executive Coach and he is also a doctoral student studying Organizational Psychology. He teaches contemporary law enforcement issues for the State of California’s Law Enforcement Executive Development Program. Chief Hyde is also a co-founder and past president of the West Coast Post-trauma Retreat. The WCPR is a trauma treatment program for emergency service professionals from Guam to London. He was the co-coordinator of the Sacramento Police Department’s Peer Support Program for 14 years. He has taught and developed peer support programs for law enforcement agencies throughout the country for the past 20 years. He is a member of the Sacramento Regional Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Team and the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation. For the past 8 years, Chief Hyde has provided volunteer trauma recovery consulting to the California National Guard by helping to develop a Peer Support Program for California soldiers deploying to and returning from the Middle East. He is currently working with the Department of Defense to expand the California National Guard’s Peer To Peer Program nationwide. He has been a presenter for the 2008 and 2009 Department of Defense/VA National Suicide Prevention Conference. He is the recipient of the California National Guard’s Medal of Merit in 2007. He is also the recipient of the Association of the United States Army’s Patrick Henry Distinguished Service Award in 2007.

After retiring from his 27-year career in law enforcement, Jeff most recently served as the directory of operations for Secure Community Network. Prior to that, he was the vice president of safety initiatives for TNG. Jeff is a nationally recognized expert in school safety and has spoken at various events such as the Wisconsin School Resource Officers Conference, the Department of Justice Conference presenting on “Missing and Abducted Children” in Texas and recently met with the United States Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, to discuss K-12 responses to active shooter events. Jeff previously served on the Advisory Board National Association for Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment (NABITA) and as part of their Threat Institute faculty.

Jeff served in law enforcement for 27 years and has an extensive background in the complex field of public safety in the school environment. He has worked for the California State University Police Department and the Grant School District Police Department – six (6) years of which he served as the Chief of Police. Jeff also served as an Interim Chief of Police for a Central Valley California city for a little over a year. In addition, he also worked as a Deputy Sheriff for the Placer County Sheriff’s Department.

During his tenure with Grant School District Police Department, Jeff was responsible for implementing their School Resource Officer program within the Grant School District and he was the architect behind the District’s “Trek to Success” curriculum, a youth team building and mentoring outdoors program. Jeff Solomon holds a B.A. degree in Criminal Justice Management. He is a graduate of the Senior Management Institute for Police (SMIP) at the Police Executive Research Forum, along with the LAPD’s West Point Leadership program. In 2002, he was named the “Law Enforcement Administrator of the Year” by the California School Resource Officers Association and in 1998 he received a Meritorious Commendation Award for Life Saving while with the Grant School District Police Department.

Formerly a partner with TNG and the president of NABITA, the National Association for Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment, Dr. Brian Van Brunt has provided consulting services to schools, colleges, and universities across the country and abroad on a wide variety of topics related to threat assessment, student mental health, counseling, campus violence, and behavioral intervention.

He has reached well over 150,000 individual staff and faculty at colleges and workplaces across the country through on-site and virtual trainings, and remote, asynchronous training modules on violence, mental health, and suicide prevention. Brian has taught at a number of universities and colleges over his career. He has offered classes in counseling theory, ethics, program evaluation, statistics, and sociology for both graduate and undergraduate students. He has served as the director of counseling at New England College and Western Kentucky University and a graduate professor at the University of Toledo.

Brian is a regular speaker for academic conferences around the world. He has presented at dozens of workshops with the American College Counseling Association (ACCA), Association of Student Conduct Administrators (ASCA), National Association of Forensic Counselors (NAFC), American College Personal Association (ACPA), Association of University College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD), Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA), and the European Congress on Violence in Clinical Psychiatry (OUD).

In addition to authoring several books, he has published numerous articles in academic, peer-reviewed journals and practice-based publications. Brian also developed a mental health crisis guide for study abroad advisors for the American Councils and has written textbook test banks and instructor guides for Pearson Education.

Bethany Smith (she/her/hers) serves as the director of the safety division and develops and manages their online presence, expert systems, and supplemental materials. Bethany worked with Dr. Brian Van Brunt to develop the Pathways risk rubric and the DarkFox violence risk assessment. She also owns Looking Glass Consulting and Design, which provides customized technology solutions by taking the time to understand not just the problem at hand, but the larger context and design elements needed to reach the goals of the end users. From grant development to innovative technology solutions including interactive graphics, learning management system design and online database and retrieval, she supports the vision of the safety division in a creative, accessible and effective manner. Bethany is the co-author of White Supremacist Violence: Understanding the Resurgence and Stopping the Spread and contributed to Understanding and Treating Incels and An Educator’s Guide to Assessing Threats in Student Writing.

Bethany brings her brand of personal management skills with a focus on collaborative planning, coordination and, above all, ensuring the customers experience is positive one. By bringing together a multidisciplinary team of educators, advocates, counselors, instructors and law enforcement, Bethany connects technology with subject matter experts to create a unique approach to providing resources, guidance and community to those working in these fields.

Sgt. MIKE HENKLE (ret.) Fresno County Sheriff’s Department and Chief of the Corrections Division of D-Prep Inc. Sgt. Henkle worked for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department for over 17 years and was medically retired due to an injury sustained while on duty. He has worked at every detention facility within the Sheriff’s Department, including the Branch Jail before it was closed in the early 1990’s.

His last assignment prior to retirement was as the Training Unit Supervisor. He held this position for the last seven years of his career.

He worked every floor in every facility as a correctional officer, as well as being a Jail Training Officer for two years prior to promoting to sergeant. As a sergeant, he supervised every facility and was also the administrative sergeant for two years. After that, he became the Training Unit Supervisor for the next seven years. He was a sergeant for eleven of his seventeen years with the department.

During his time in the Training Unit, he served as the Correctional Academy Coordinator and has taught most subjects within the academy. He is a certified instructor in Chemical Agents, Pepperball, Expandable Baton, Simunitions, Firearms, Sling Systems, Diversionary Devices and Less Lethal Impact Munitions. He has conducted several high intensity tactical training scenarios for his department’s first responders and SERT team. In 2003 he became a Master Instructor for Pepperball Technologies, Inc. He has instructed courses with the Pepperball Systems throughout numerous agencies in California and Nevada.

Sgt. Henkle has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminology and a minor in Business Administration from California State University, Fresno. He is an adjunct faculty instructor with the State Center Community College District. He has taught the Introduction to Corrections course; and currently teaches in the Supervisors CORE course and the Juvenile Counselor Academy. When the Critical Incident Command teams were developed in his department, he was appointed as one of the team leaders for the department’s Critical Incident Command teams. He has participated in several major critical incidents and training drills in the field and in the detention facilities; from being the Incident Commander, Operations OIC, and Logistics OIC. He has served in these capacities during the following situations: a barricaded gunman/hostage, active shooters, suicides, forest fires, loss of facility water, and loss of facility power, and search and rescues. He has taught the Incident Command System to management, supervisors and line officers in patrol and corrections. For six years he was a department coordinator for the Peer Counseling Program where he conducted or coordinated Critical Incident Stress Debriefings. He has lead or coordinated with mental health professionals the debriefings for Officer Involved Shootings, Line of Duty Deaths, Officer Deaths, and Suicides.

He is very involved in youth sports within his community. He is the past president of the youth soccer league, assistant commissioner for girl’s softball. Along with coaching these two sports, he also coaches basketball and Babe Ruth baseball. His wife Kristi is a third grade teacher and they have four children: Claire 16, Cameron 15, Kaycee 10, and Cole 4.

Sgt. Susan Feenstra is currently assigned as the Employee Services Unit Peer Support Coordinator for the Sacramento Police Department. Sgt. Feenstra was one of the original founders of the Sacramento Police Department’s Peer Support Program and has been the Program Coordinator for the past 21 years. Sgt. Feenstra has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from California State University, Sacramento. She has received numerous awards for her work in Problem Oriented Policing, including an award from the Attorney General of the State California for her innovative work in this area. Sgt. Feenstra has help start and guide at least 18 other law enforcement agencies in starting or expanding Peer Support Programs, including the Sacramento Sheriff\’s Department, California Highway Patrol, California State Police, and California Department of Motor Vehicles. Sgt. Feenstra was named the 1995 Woman Peace Officer of the Year for California, the Jaycee’s 1995 Law Enforcement Officer of the Year and the YWCA’s 1995 Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. She currently teaches Peer Support and Critical Incidents at the Sacramento Police Academy and other organizations. Sgt. Feenstra is a critical incident stress debriefer certified through the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation.

Tim Hunter retired from the Sacramento Police Department as a sergeant in 2007 after a 28-year career. He was a Crisis Negotiator for 15 years, spending the last 14 years as a Team Leader. Tim served on the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Committee for the Crisis Negotiations component of AB 991; he has worked on several other POST SWAT training projects.
Tim has served for 6 years as the Conference Chair for the California Association of Hostage Negotiators and was a board member for 10 years. He has instructed various Crisis Negotiations courses for D-Prep, Inc. since 2004.
Tim attended the two-week National Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Course in Manchester, England in 2019. Tim is one of a select group of United States law enforcement crisis negotiators to have been invited to attend this class. He has presented at CAHN events statewide, at the 2021 Midwest Crisis Negotiators Conference, at the California Tactical Dispatcher Association’s annual conference, and he presented Crisis Negotiations curriculum at the first annual Negotiator’s Conference at the Beijing People’s Police College in 2004.
Tim worked at the UC Davis Police Department for 5-years in a variety of assignments, the last being his favorite. Tim worked as an Outreach Officer; he was involved in forming and running the Cadet Academy, where UCD seniors participated in an abbreviated academy before testing for open positions in the Department. Several former student cadets are now working across the state in various law enforcement agencies.

Wayne Spees retired as a Detective Sergeant after a 31-year career at the San Diego Police Department (SDPD). His areas of expertise include threat assessment and site security; executive protection; personal safety; and training. In addition to his time in gangs, narcotics, and juvenile investigations, Wayne served 9 years on SWAT and 15 years as a Team Leader for the Emergency Negotiation Team.

In his last assignment, Wayne was assigned to the SDPD Criminal Intelligence Unit, where his responsibilities included international and domestic terror groups and threat assessment investigations. He also provided dignitary protection and site security assessments, and worked details with the U.S. Secret Service, protecting the President, Vice President, and other high-ranking members of the government. On a local level, Wayne has worked protective details for the Governor, Mayor, and several celebrities. He has extensive experience in personal and site security.

As a state-recognized expert in hostage/crisis negotiations, Wayne Spees is a graduate of the FBI’s National Crisis Negotiation Course at Quantico, Virginia. He also attended and graduated from the Scotland Yard National Hostage/Crisis Negotiation Course at Hendon and the Force Management of Kidnap and Extortion for Negotiators Course at the Ryton College of Policing in England. He teaches negotiation skills to police officers throughout the state of California, drawing from his 24+ years of combined critical incident experience as a SWAT operator and Crisis Negotiations Team Leader. He is a regular presenter at the annual California Association of Hostage Negotiators’ Conference. Wayne has also taught police tactics for 31 years, instructing more than 10,000 officers in subjects such as active shooter response, response to ambush, surveillance and counter-surveillance, and officer safety. He developed SDPD’s original Active Shooter response training and is still instructing the subject at the police academy. Additionally, he has worked with Special Forces of the United States military to assist operators in working undercover assignments.

Wayne has presented seminars to several public and private companies in San Diego. His crisis de-escalation training includes sharing communication skills that are invaluable when dealing with people who are angry, upset, and even suicidal, while his response to active shooter training discusses situational awareness and safety measures to increase survival in such an event. Wayne earned a B.S. in Administration of Justice from Pennsylvania State University. He also holds numerous training certificates and instructor credentials in police-related fields.