A standing-room-only crowd packed into the community room at Brainerd Baptist Church Thursday evening to tell city officials they are sick and tired of calling 911 to report crimes and getting no response from police.

A Cameron Lane resident, for example, reminded Chattanooga Police Chief Freeman Cooper that burglars kicked in her neighbor's door and robbed the house about a year ago. She immediately called 911 to report it, she said, but it was more than an hour before police arrived to investigate.

By then, of course, the crooks were long gone, she said as the crowd at the meeting organized by the Hilltop Neighborhood Association listened intently.

"Last week the same house was broken into again," she said.

And, just as the first time, it took police over an hour to respond to her 911 call.

That needs to change, she and dozens of other Brainerd area residents told city officials. And, if the hangup is at the 911 call center, where recent administrative changes have caused communication breakdowns, then the powers that be need to step in and correct the problem, they said.

In the past, workers at the 911 center were assigned to take calls from particular geographic areas, Police Chief Freeman Cooper explained. For example, the operator assigned to handle East Ridge only took calls from that area.

Now, thanks to a recent reorganization, those same workers take calls from throughout the county - and sometimes they are not familiar with the area from which a call originates, he said.

"I've had them ask me where Riverfront Parkway is, and they're sitting there a few hundred feet away from it," he told the crowd.

As time passes and the workers become more familiar with various locales, hopefully that will ease the confusion. In the meantime, he said, when people call 911 and get no response, they need to let officials know what happened.

"You did the right thing by calling 911," he told one member of the crowd. "We don't want you out there enforcing laws. It's too dangerous . . . You don't know who these people are and what they are willing to do. You get in their way, they don't fight - they just shoot you."

It's important to remember that slow response times are not always the fault of 911 operators, he said. Sometimes the delays are caused by the callers who don't report crimes accurately.

For example, he said, if someone sees a suspicious person attempting to break into a neighbor's house, the way the incident is reported has a major effect on how authorities respond.

If the caller merely reports a "suspicious person," the call is relatively low priority. If he or she tells 911 they are reporting a "burglary in progress," officers are sent out immediately.

Mayor Ron Littlefield and Councilwoman Carol Berz, who also addressed the crowd, said the current economic meltdown has resulted in an increase in crime in Brainerd, as well as across the city and the nation. Marti Rutherford, City Council candidate in District 6, attended, but did not speak.

Officials said most violent crime is down in Chattanooga, except for homicides. The city had 20 homicides in 2008, compared to just 13 the year before.

In other cities across Tennessee, Chief Cooper said, the problem is worse. Knoxville had 30 homicides last year, Nashville had 75 and Memphis had 145.

Even in Chattanooga, officials said, other areas are even worse off than Brainerd.

For example, a recent Ochs Report revealed that the area around Erlanger Medical Center on Third Street has a far worse crime problem than does Brainerd. Unfortunately, Councilwoman Berz noted, some criminals from that area apparently have expanded into other neighborhoods - including Brainerd.

Mayor Littlefield said one of his neighbors recently left his daughter's old Volvo parked on the street overnight, and discovered the next morning that someone had stolen the radio out of it. He replaced the radio, only to have it stolen once again.

"He doesn't park the car on the street anymore," the mayor noted. "He leaves it behind the house."

All three city officials said they personally have been victims of burglars.

"I've had two cars stolen and my house broken into," Chief Cooper told the crowd. "When my car was stolen, I had set a TV in the back to take into work the next day . . . I never got that car back. It was destroyed."

Both the mayor and the police chief said a huge percentage of the crimes are caused by a relatively small number of people.

For example, they noted, when police arrested the four adults and two juveniles who recently burglarized an 86-year-old woman, they solved far more than that one crime. The six are suspects in at least 20 burglaries.

Efforts to track down such criminals will continue, they promised. But people who believe the problem can be solved simply by putting more police on the streets are being unrealistic, Chief Cooper said. "We can't arrest our way out of this problem."