Butler Township native Jim Shearer has tangled with outlaw bikers, religious extremists and domestic terrorists.

Yet, the FBI agent has usually done it quietly, working undercover and out of the spotlight.

So it went against his nature to be among a team of FBI agents honored with a Distinguished Service Award by United States Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch on Nov. 10.

“Anybody that really knows me knows that I don’t do the job for recognition,” Shearer said. “I prefer to be the guy in the shadows.”

However, that doesn’t mean the award wasn’t well earned.

Shearer, 39, was the supervisor of Operation Short Fuse, which worked out of FBI’s Seattle Division and its Washington D.C. base and prevented the trafficking of biochemicals and toxins over the Internet by those both in the United States and abroad.

According to a Department of Justice news release, Operation Short Fuse has conducted undercover operations in support of 95 FBI investigations, many of which began as a result of the operation’s intelligence collection.

The operation disrupted 18 subjects who tried to purchase, sell and/or use chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive materials in the U.S. and around the world.

The Department of Justice’s site further credits the operation.

“These disruptions, often executed in coordination with international partners, undoubtedly prevented a significant loss of innocent life that would have otherwise resulted absent this sustained and extraordinary law enforcement effort,” the release read.

And to think, Jim Shearer wasn’t going to be a police officer.

Though the son of longtime and now retired Butler Township police officer James Shearer, Jim was initially pre-med student at West Virginia Wesleyan.

It wasn’t until his sophomore year of college that he changed his mind. Shearer transferred to Mansfield University and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“After I transferred I kind of did some soul searching and took a criminal justice class, and the next thing you know I was hooked,” he said.

He again transferred to Point Park University, where he graduated in December 1999 with a major in Public Administration and a minor each in Criminal Justice Administration and Political Science.

Shearer went down to Wilmington, N.C., in February 2000 to enter the police academy, and hit the streets on patrol July 3 of that year.

“It kind of surprised me when he graduated from college that he decided to go into law enforcement,” his father said. “Being a cop’s son is a great thing up until the sixth grade, and after that it’s a cross to bear.”

Shearer and his brothers, Don and Chris, were sometimes harassed by their classmates for having a father who was a police officer, but they didn’t tell their father about it until years later.

“They didn’t want me to get involved in anything,” his father said. “They took care of their own business.”

While in Wilmington, Shearer achieved a Master’s degree in criminology in Florida State University’s online program. But that wasn’t the only education he received.

“Working in a southern city is a totally dark contrast between living in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Wilmington is a great city, but it was definitely an eye opener in regards to law enforcement. It had a very deep-rooted drug problem. A lot of violence. I worked probably more homicides in one year down there than Butler’s probably seen in the last 30.”

Shearer spent about a year-and-a-half on patrol before moving onto special operations, where he did undercover work and targeted drugs and prostitution.

Doing this kind of work broadened his worldview.

“Moving forward, you quickly learn how to talk to people, for one, and grasp that life isn’t as easy as you think it is in all aspects,” he said. “You definitely see a little bit more of the world from a different perspective. A lot of areas I work in were low class. A lot of poverty in some areas manifested the drug problems and violence.”

Shearer’s father said his son gained a reputation as a go-getter during those years.

“His bosses would give him assignments and they always knew it was going to be done right,” he said.

Shearer joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March 2005, moving to Grand Rapids, Mich. He worked matters of domestic terrorism, specifically ecoterrorism and white supremacy, as well as outlaw motorcycle gangs.

That work, Shearer said, exposed him to an entirely different strain of crime.

“As a police officer, you’re kind of exposed to a crime committed as a way of life, or maybe a way to get by,” he said. “Whereas when you’re working terrorism, now you start to see crime, criminal activity or terrorist acts committed based on either radical ideology or radical-based religions. From that point it was kind of an eye opener. From an investigative standpoint how you do cases doesn’t change. The mental makeup of the investigation of who you’re dealing with changes.”

Shearer became the first ever agent to obtain a search warrant for a domestic case under the Patriot Act that was allowed to be sworn in one district and executed in another.

The warrant was served in conjunction with the arrest of Earth Liberation Front member Marie Mason, who was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison in 2009 for the 1999 arson of Michigan State University’s Agricultural Hall.

He transferred to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Pittsburgh in August 2010. He has been there ever since, except for the span from March 2014 to February 2015 during which he worked with Operation Short Fuse.

“It was a team effort,” he said of the operation. “I was the supervisor on it, and I pretty much just laid the groundwork for the guys, a great team to be able to do it. From a leadership standpoint, that’s what I’m more proud of, being able to pave the road for those guys, that they had everything they needed to be successful, and recognize that they had the foresight and vision to see something that was a threat to the U.S. and our partners abroad. They were able to get out in front of it and do some great things with it.”

Shearer’s father expressed pride in not only Jim but his other sons as well. He gave credit to Becky, his wife and their mother.

“She’s the one that pretty much kept them in line quite a bit as far as academics and such,” he said. “They all loved baseball. They all had exceptionally good grades and such. I was lucky enough that I got all three of them through college.”

Shearer’s work has taken him all over the world, from Ireland to Israel, but he takes a little bit of Butler County with him everywhere he goes.

“I think from growing up here, everybody knows each other, everybody’s friendly, so when you’re used to that you can inject that into what you’re doing on a daily basis,” he said. “It’s invaluable, being able to relate to people. If you can’t do that, you’re going to find it difficult to be successful.”