Dial Phones Employed in War on Drugs

A telephone company is taking a technological step backward in trying to curb drug trafficking.

US West has replaced its push-button pay phones with rotary dial models at 18 locations here. The idea is to make it difficult for drug dealers to conduct business via telephone pagers, since most pagers work with calls only from push-button phones, Mike Breda of the phone company said.

Pagers have become an important tool of dealers trying to avoid telephone lines that may be tapped. “Everybody’s got them,” said Lt. James Singer of the St. Paul police narcotics unit.

Drugs are ordered by calling a dealer’s pager and then punching in a phone number or a prearranged code, police say. The dealer responds by calling back or showing up with the order.

In the past, Minneapolis and St. Paul police regularly asked the telephone company to remove pay phones in certain areas or to adjust pay phones so they did not accept incoming calls. Removing public phones, of course, can hurt residents who cannot afford private telephones and inconvenience other law-abiding people.

“We have noticed a decrease in traffic in at least a couple of locations where we changed the phones,” said Minneapolis Council member Jackie Cherryhomes. “I don’t think it is going to win the battle against drugs, but if you can affect it in any way, that’s important.”

US West’s tactic may not work for long, however. One paging service now offers a pager that works with any type of phone.

Another company is trying to discourage the use of its pagers for illegal purposes. Steven Miorana, general manager of MinnComm Paging in Minneapolis, said that a drug dealer may receive more than 1,000 pages a month, so MinnComm is charging an extra 20 cents for each call after the 500th.