Sunday Times 2
An American of Sri Lankan heritage heads US Law Enforcement Agency
View(s):NEW YORK – Ashan Benedict, a 45-year-old American of Sri Lankan heritage, has been appointed to head the New York Division of the one of the key law enforcement agencies in the United States: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
As a Special Agent-in-Charge of the State of New York, Benedict will be leading a team of highly trained agents in one of the most challenging jobs in federal law enforcement, including investigating violations of federal laws relating to arson, illegal possession of firearms, explosives, alcohol and tobacco.
Operating under the US Department of Justice, ATF’s mandate includes surveillance, interviewing suspects and witnesses, making arrests, obtaining and executing search warrants, and searching for physical evidence and cracking down on money laundering.
Special Agent-in-Charge Ashan Benedict, a Yonkers native, is heading up the New York Division of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) at his office in the Bronx on Nov. 3, 2016. (Photo: Ricky Flores/The Journal News)
A profile of Benedict in the Journal News, part of the USA Today network, says growing up in a South Asian family, Benedict’s dream of carrying a gun and a badge was fairly unusual. The son of Sri Lankan immigrants knew his background typically would mean pursuing a career as a doctor, an engineer, a teacher. But a special agent?
“Law enforcement is not a field that South Asians typically go into,” said Benedict. “But I guess my personality and growing up in Yonkers (New York) … you want to try different things,” he says in an interview with Matt Spillane.
His late father Edward Benedict, who migrated to the US in the 1960s, was a teacher at Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx for almost 20 years while his son graduated from Fordham University. His mother Chitra Benedict arrived in the US in the 1970s.
In his interview, Ashan Benedict and his wife, who is a special agent for the ATF, said they recently moved to the Scarsdale area with their three children. His mother and sister live in Westchester (upstate New York) as well, he said.
“It’s fantastic,” he was quoted as saying about his new assignment. “It really motivates and drives me to do better, because this is not just another post of duty. This is my home. For me, this is the pinnacle of my career,” he added.
According to the Journal News, Benedict’s new leadership role in New York gives the state its second top law enforcement official of South Asian heritage; Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is a native of India.
“I believe that diversity makes us stronger as we all bring a unique point of view to help address complicated problems facing law enforcement and the public at large,” Benedict said, adding that he has met with Bharara. “ATF and the Southern District of New York have long had a strong relationship, and Mr. Bharara has an outstanding reputation as a crime fighter. I look forward to our continued partnership.”
According to the Journal News, many of Benedict’s childhood Yonkers friends ended up becoming police officers, and Benedict also took the Yonkers Police Department test. After graduating from Fordham Prep and then Fordham University with an accounting degree, though, he worked as a special agent in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation Division in Southern California and New York City, and joined the U.S. Treasury Department in 1995.
“I applied with both the Treasury Department and Yonkers Police Department at around the same time,” Benedict said. “However, the Treasury process moved faster, and I was already in Los Angeles as an IRS agent when Yonkers PD called and offered me a position. I decided at the time to stay with Treasury.”
In 1998, he became a special agent for the ATF, investigating drug trafficking in Washington, D.C. His career also took him to Baltimore and Los Angeles, where he served as an assistant special agent in charge, before his current appointment in New York.
Along the way he met his wife, Katherine, whose father also worked for the ATF. A mutual friend introduced them while they were starting their ATF careers, he said. In his interview, he said teamwork was crucial in several of the most high-profile cases Benedict has worked on, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon; the sniper shootings that killed 10 people around Washington, D.C., in 2002; and the San Bernardino shooting last year, when 14 people were killed.
It was “tough to watch” the scene in San Bernardino, witnessing a level of violence that people aren’t meant to see, Benedict said. He and his wife both saw violence in the sniper investigation, which they worked on in separate command posts.
“We were passing each other in the night, literally, for three weeks,” he said. “It was emotionally and physically draining for all members of that task force. The hardest thing to see was how the lives of those that were killed and their families were affected.”
Working at the crash site at the Pentagon and having family in New York, the Sept. 11 attack was a “very intensely personal situation for me,” Benedict said. He interviewed many people in the 9/11 investigation, including someone directly associated with the hijackers.
He saw a shift in philosophy among law enforcement afterward, he said.”I think 9/11 helped spur that level of cooperation among law enforcement agencies,” he said. “Ultimately, let’s cut through all the territorial ‘This is my lane’ kind of thing. It’s all of our lanes.”