QUEENS, N.Y. — At the 17th annual Fundraising and Awards Banquet hosted by the Ex-Correctional Officers Association of Jamaica, a 35-year veteran of the Jamaica Constabulary Force delivered an impassioned call to action, urging the hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans living in the diaspora to join the fight against violent crime and weapons trafficking back home.
Superintendent Errol Adams, a former correctional officer who survived being held hostage by death row inmates during a 1998 prison uprising at the St Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town, framed crime not as a localized Jamaican issue, but as a collective emotional weight carried by Jamaican communities spanning every corner of the globe. Even for families who have built new lives in New York, Toronto, London, Miami, or Fort Lauderdale, the fear of harm hitting elderly relatives, children, or loved ones who remain on the island weighs heavily, he said.
“Crime therefore has become more than a local issue, it has become an emotional burden carried by Jamaicans everywhere,” Adams told the gathered crowd of attendees, who included community leaders, diaspora organizers, and former Jamaican law enforcement officers.
Central to Adams’ address was the revelation that criminal networks have systematically exploited one of the diaspora’s most beloved traditions: the decades-long practice of sending barrels packed with household goods, food, and school supplies to support family members back home. What began as an act of love and mutual aid, he explained, has been manipulated by transnational criminal groups to smuggle illegal firearms into the country.
Adams outlined how traffickers hide weapons in seemingly ordinary shipments, stashing guns inside refrigerators, generators, industrial equipment, and shipped furniture. Contraband moves through a variety of channels, including commercial shipping containers, official cargo ports, private courier services, national postal systems, and unmonitored informal coastal landing spots scattered along Jamaica’s extensive shoreline. These operations are not opportunistic, Adams stressed; they are planned, strategic, and directly tied to global transnational criminal networks.
Adams called for the diaspora to take intentional, concrete steps to disrupt these networks. “The Diaspora must never allow love for family to be manipulated into support for criminality,” he said. Key steps for community members include rejecting unregulated proxy or informal shipping arrangements, verifying both the contents and intended recipient of every shipment they arrange, only using official, legal trade and shipping channels, and refusing any requests to participate in even seemingly minor illegal activities. He added that diaspora members also hold a unique role in sharing critical intelligence with law enforcement to help track and break up trafficking rings.
The veteran law enforcement officer acknowledged the ongoing challenges Jamaican security forces face in stemming the flow of weapons. Traffickers are highly adaptable, he noted: every time authorities upgrade security protocols at ports or entry points, criminals quickly pivot to exploit new vulnerabilities. Jamaica’s more than 1,000 kilometers of jagged coastline also creates nearly insurmountable logistical hurdles, as monitoring every remote beach, small fishing dock, and informal entry point is logistically impossible for even the most well-resourced security teams.
“When criminal creativity combines with organised trafficking networks, the consequences usually become deadly,” Adams emphasized.
He also laid out the far-reaching economic and social damage that persistent crime inflicts on Jamaica’s long-term development. Each year, the Jamaican government spends billions of dollars on policing, security operations, judicial processing, incarceration, and emergency medical response to violent crime — resources that could otherwise be invested in public education, critical infrastructure, universal healthcare, technological innovation, and youth development programs that lift communities across the country.
Adams did highlight recent progress in Jamaica’s crime reduction efforts, sharing official data showing significant gains between 2024 and 2025. In 2024, Jamaican security forces seized 833 illegal firearms, while recording roughly 1,141 murders and more than 1,000 non-fatal shooting incidents. By comparison, 2025 saw 1,201 illegal firearms seized, and the national murder count dropped to 673 — the lowest recorded total in 30 years. To continue this downward trend, Adams argued, Jamaica’s crime-fighting strategy must remain holistic, coordinated, and centered on partnership between security forces and communities at home and abroad.
Beyond the keynote address, the 2026 banquet served as a celebration of diaspora giving and community support. Three students from Copiague High School on Long Island were awarded the association’s annual 2026 scholarships, and the organization distributed monetary donations to three causes: the youth soccer team of the North Bronx Seventh-day Adventist Church, Team Jamaica Bickle, and the Tulloch Legacy Foundation’s Hurricane Melissa recovery efforts.
The night’s top honor, the 2026 Community Service Award, was presented to Caribbean Food Delights, the food conglomerate founded by iconic Jamaican entrepreneur and philanthropist Vincent HoSang. The organization was recognized for decades of sustained investment in community development projects across both the Jamaican diaspora and Jamaica itself. Janice Julian accepted the award on behalf of Caribbean Food Delights from association president Ronnie Hammick.