AN OVER-STRETCHED police force has to choose which 999 calls to respond to immediately.

Cleveland Chief Constable Barry Shaw told a public meeting on Teesside: "I never thought we would get to the point where we would have to put 999 calls in priority order to attend to them.

"We are having great difficulty at the moment in responding to 999 calls. At certain times of the day we run out of officers and have to take some officers off more minor jobs."

Mr Shaw also gave more positive news to the audience at the Redcar and Cleveland College.

"Last year we had the third highest arrest rate in the country. We have the highest stop-check figures anywhere in the country for general crime and anti-social behaviour. We have the highest conviction rate of young people anywhere in the country for serious offences."

He added: "We are still a high crime area and we are going to be a high crime area for the forseeable future. It is inevitable from time to time we are going to fail some people at some time, for a variety of circumstances. It's not a perfect world.

"We get about one million telephone calls a year. We have just over 100,000 999 calls every year. Out of those 100,000 we prioritise 30,000 as matters of life or death."

The meeting on Wednesday night was one of a series of annual liaison sessions the chief constable holds in the four boroughs of Teesside.