Re­cent­ly as­signed As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) North-West and Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Richard Smith says he is will­ing to meet any chal­lenge of­fered giv­en his new ar­eas of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Smith, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as Snr Supt for the South­ern Di­vi­sion, the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and most re­cent­ly as ACP Ad­min­is­tra­tion, was giv­en the port­fo­lio ear­li­er this week.

In this of­fice, he would man­age the op­er­a­tions and re­sources of the West­ern and the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion.

For 2024, the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion con­tributed to the high­est num­ber of mur­ders na­tion­al­ly with 91 mur­ders as of De­cem­ber 9.

A re­port from the TTPS' Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch in De­cem­ber at­trib­uted the large num­ber of mur­ders to in­creased gang vi­o­lence.

Com­ment­ing on the new role at a po­lice me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, Smith said he was pre­pared and ca­pa­ble of ac­cept­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with the help of staff from both di­vi­sions and God.

"I’ve been here on two in­stances be­fore, work­ing in the di­vi­sion it­self and then work­ing as a Su­per­in­ten­dent at the CID, CRO.

“So for the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, I’ll just con­tin­ue what I’m ac­cus­tomed do­ing, op­er­a­tions, man­ag­ing di­vi­sions, it’s what I like, what I love. It’s my pas­sion."

Smith said he was ea­ger to con­tin­ue his work in the West­ern and Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sions, es­pe­cial­ly as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­mains in ef­fect.

He al­so thanked the of­fi­cers in the cap­i­tal city for their ef­forts, but main­tained that much more work was need­ed.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns from some of­fi­cers that in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing units have not been per­form­ing op­ti­mal­ly, Smith said these po­lice sec­tions have been pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion, but as­sured he would be able to bring about the nec­es­sary re­sults if they were chal­lenged.

“I am con­fi­dent if they aren't per­form­ing up to scratch, in­deed, I would en­sure they per­form up to mark to get the de­sired in­for­ma­tion to go af­ter these per­sons.”

In ad­di­tion to his role as head of ACP North-West and Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, Smith will al­so re­main as head of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit.