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Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series.
ROSE HILL — Military roots run generations deep for combat veteran Ben Parrish, who started his law enforcement journey in 1987 when he joined the U.S. Coast Guard as a young 17-year-old.
Today, Parrish serves as the Duplin County Sheriff’s Office training coordinator, a position he has held for the last nine years.
“My father was in the Army. His father was in the Army and his father’s father was in the Army,” said Parrish, adding that his military heritage goes back to before the country was established. “There are 14 documented Patriots in my family history. I have had somebody in my family involved in every conflict that this country has ever been involved in.”
Parrish shared that his biological father’s ancestry line goes back to John Skinner, the first U.S. Marshal of North Carolina.
“My biological father’s family is originally from Lenoir County… The family migrated in the 1700s down to South Carolina, but the family name stuck in Lenoir County, and that’s the Skinner’s,” said Parrish.
During his time with the U.S. Coast Guard, Parrish participated in Operation Just Cause in Panama, known as the biggest operation since the Vietnam War when the U.S. invaded Panama to oust Gen. Manuel Noriega from power.
“I was down there for the Haitian migration, Cuban migration, that whole cocaine cowboy heyday. I was down there when the government was going after Jose Gacha and Manuel Escobar that whole episode, so I had seen the federal aspect of law enforcement on that side,” said Parrish. “It was a very active time in the war against drugs.”
In 1990, Parish got out and started his law enforcement career in North Carolina with Durham County Sheriff’s Office, then went to Creedmoor Police Department, just north of Durham.
“Ended up leaving there as a Lieutenant– the first Lieutenant that agency had as an investigator,” said Parrish, adding that he spent the bulk of his career with Durham Police Department.
“My last duty assignment with Durham Police Department I was part of the housing unit assigned to McDowell Terrace right near North Carolina Central University. I absolutely loved it. The community was great for the two years that I was assigned there. We had zero violent crimes. We were very much embedded in the Community… They saw us as law enforcement officers, but they also saw us as people that wanted to help their community.”
In 2003, Parrish deployed for his first tour to Iraq with the Army National Guard. The combat military police officer at the time, was part of a protective service detail for the commanding general.
“They had sent four of us from our unit to the schoolhouse in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., to be trained as protective service agents, we had to come back and teach 14 others how to do the job before we deployed to Iraq.”
The combat veteran’s patrol area was in the Diyala Province — the area closest north to Iran. According to Parrish, they had a lot of missions going into the communities and in Iraq. “I think all total, I did 180 wartime missions outside the fence,” said Parrish. “That was with the 30th Brigade out of Clinton, N.C.”
On April 18, 2008, during his second tour of combat, his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
“It killed my gunner instantly and injured my driver and myself. I was medevac out of the country because of my injuries,” said Parrish, adding that his wife at the time had moved with her parents in Duplin County to help with the kids while he was deployed and when he returned home, “she said we’re not moving back to Durham, and I said ‘yes dear’ … and I became a citizen of Duplin County.”
Parrish joined the Duplin County Sheriff’s Office in July of 2008, by August, he was assigned to the gang unit and subsequently got assigned to the Department of Homeland Security, then the FBI’s Safe Streets Gang Task Force and the U.S. Marshals.
“I was sworn with three federal agencies at one time, all while working for the Duplin County Sheriff’s Office… we were able to bring resources to bear on the criminal activity here in Duplin County. In the seven years that I worked with them one of my primary responsibilities was the transnational gangs,” said Parrish. “At the time we were not actively tracking gang members in Duplin County. During my tenure with the gang unit, we started tracking gangs… we were tracking 21 different gangs in Duplin County. That was not to say that they were all here, but they were operating in and around Duplin County, within two years we were tracking right at 41 documented gangs. That is a lot for a community like this…”
“Fast forward to 2013, my partner at the time was a New Hanover County detective and he ended up getting shot in Creekwood Apartments during an Op …he survived the incident but subsequently had to medically retire, about a year later is when I went to, at the time, Sheriff Wallace and asked if I could come off the task force and come home,” said Parrish. He became a training coordinator in 2014.
“At the time, the county did not have a training facility of its own,” said Parrish. “We worked very diligently to try and get our own training facility.”
