ARMED police in County Durham are to be routinely issued with plastic bullets to deal with gun incidents.

The move means officers will be able to fire without killing or seriously wounding armed suspects.

Baton guns have been used to quell riots in Northern Ireland for some time, but Durham's chief constable George Hedges has pledged they will not be used in public disorder incidents.

The baton guns, which have been available to firearms specialists since 1999, have been deployed in the UK but never fired. Now they will be routinely carried by all the force's armed response vehicles but will continue to be used by specialists.

Assistant chief constable Ron Hogg said: "Baton guns are not intended to be a replacement for conventional weapons. Essentially we are trying to make every option available.

"Control room inspectors, incident commanders and executive officers must now consider calling in batons gunners when we attend a report of a firearms incident.

"Conventional weapons used as a shoot-to-stop option invariably leave their target seriously injured or dead.

"The new baton rounds can be fired over a distance or at close range and are capable of disabling a man or a woman without loss of life."

All baton gunners undergo extensive training and are on call 24 hours a day. They can make their own way to an incident or be driven by police colleagues.

The force has also decided to put specialist dog handlers on 24-hour stand-by to give incident commanders a full range of choices in dealing with a situation. Passive attack dogs can take out an armed suspect on command but they are also trained to lie on surrendered weapons or make searches of buildings with a tiny television camera strapped to their heads.

There have been 1,000 incidents involving firearms in County Durham since a man was shot and wounded during a house siege in Darlington in 1992.

The latest bullets used in the baton guns are made from polyurethane and are lighter, faster and more accurate than their predecessors.