John C. Askey

       John Askey was appointed Chief of Police for the Town of Amherst in 2007. He oversees the department, which currently is comprised of 154 sworn officers and supported by 35 full and part-time civilian employees serving 117,000 residents of Amherst, the largest suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. 

John first joined the department in 1987 as a patrol officer and rose through the ranks over a twenty-year span.  Continual advancement was always his professional goal. In 1993 he was named a lieutenant and supervised the field training of new recruits. He also rose to the position of commander of the Emergency Response Team. In 1999 he was named a captain and in 2006, assistant chief of police.

Currently, he serves on the Joint Terrorism Task Force Executive Board for the Buffalo Office of the FBI. He has two merit awards from the department to his credit, including one for his leadership during the October 2006 storm. In 2008, he received the “William French Smith Award”, presented by the U.S. Attorney General’s Office for “Outstanding Contributions to Cooperative Law Enforcement”. 

His father, John B. Askey, served as chief of the Amherst Police Department from 1989 to 1998. It is the first time in the history of the town that the son of a former chief has also served as chief. John said that he has known since high school that he wanted to work in law enforcement and follow the tradition of his father and uncle, Tom, a retired major with the New York State Police.

John holds degrees in Legal Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo and Criminal Justice from Erie Community College. He and his wife, Suzanne, a school nurse at Casey Middle School in Williamsville, have two sons, Brian and Kevin.