A POLICE chief has asked for more understanding from Darlington residents over response times.

Paul Garvin, Durham chief constable, was addressing a special meeting of the borough council on Tuesday. He was answering members' concerns about the force call centre which is now based in Bishop Auckland.

Mr Garvin said that for the vast majority of time, its call handling was good and incidents were dealt with properly.

However, he admitted some incidents had not been recorded correctly.

"On occasions, incidents haven't been prioritised high enough and consequently we didn't respond properly," he said. "I admit there have been some really badly handled incidents on occasions, but equally there has been exaggerations of incidents by councillors and residents compared to the report we actually received."

In December last year, the centre received 11,220 calls from Darlington alone - last month 14,000 were answered.

Mr Garvin said that in October 2002, officers responded to 2,000 incidents in Darlington, rising to 2,900 in October 2003 and 3,488 last month.

Coun Ian Haszeldine said the control centre's move to Bishop Auckland had hit people's confidence.

Mr Garvin said: "I think we had that bit of give and take from people with the old control room. But people need to put into context the huge number of incidents we deal with every day."

System connection problems had been rectified and switchboard staff increased.

Councillors also raised concerns about anti-social behaviour and Mr Garvin said Darlington was to get a dedicated investigation desk to improve the understanding of local problems and issues.

After the meeting, Mr Garvin told the D&S Times why police had not responded to last month's incident at the Mayflower Court residential complex for the elderly in Yarm Road.

Youths pelted the building with stones and chained and padlocked the main gates.

"On the night the incident was reported, there was an awful lot going on in Darlington including a suspicious death and a serious assault," he said.

The incident was described as some youths throwing stones and the communications centre prioritised it as requiring a response within two hours.

"At no stage was it ever reported to the police that the place was under siege. However, I am not trying to duck away from our response time," said Mr Garvin