
DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060476

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  112 lines

POLICE WANT TO PUT ROTARY DIALS ON PAY PHONES TO FOIL DRUG DEALS

For years, rotary dial telephones have been considered technological dinosaurs.

How times change.

Chesapeake's police department now hopes to use these relics to fight crime.

Police want to replace touch-tone keypads in South Norfolk public telephones with rotary dials, said Capt. Lloyd Goodbred. Unlike touch-tone phones, rotary dial phones can't be used by drug dealers to page their customers.

South Norfolk's drug dealers often use pay phones as ``portable offices,'' paging suppliers and customers with sales information, said Goodbred, who works with the city's community policing program. Digital pagers even allow drug dealers to relay messages about different products and quantities.

``We get a lot of calls from residents about guys loitering and hanging around the phones,'' Goodbred said. ``Residents don't feel safe.''

Chesapeake police hope to work with the businesses that operate the area's pay phones and have all the phones in problem areas converted within two months, Goodbred said.

By eliminating one of the ways drug dealers do business, police hope to drive them off city streets - and drive up their cost of doing business.

``They could use a cell phone instead, but there are monitors now that let you listen in on cell calls,'' Goodbred said. ``And cell phones can be expensive, with as much air time as they'd be using. If they use the phone at home, that leaves a paper trail and a direct connection.''

South Norfolk's drug problems aren't unique.

Norfolk police attacked the telephone-use problem by blocking incoming calls to pay phones, said spokesman Larry Hill.

``In areas where we had a drug problem or violent-crime problem, we had the phones removed or switched so they couldn't take calls,'' Hill said. ``The problems around the phones decreased.''

Other cities began replacing touch-tone pay phones in 1994.

New York police installed 250 rotary dial phones on city streets. Police also have replaced touch-tone phones in Lansing, Mich., and Dekalb, Ga.

Results in Lansing have been mixed.

Michigan Bell donated rotary phones in Lansing, the state capital and a city of 127,000 people, said Loren Glasscock, a spokesman for the company. The new phones have not only ridden some areas of drug dealers, they've also freed up the phones for use by other people.

``In a lot of these areas, private phones are a luxury,'' Glasscock said. ``People depend on public phones for emergencies.''

Converting the phones helped business, as well. Many shoppers were afraid to enter stores surrounded by suspected drug dealers, Glasscock said.

Old-fashioned rotary phones, however, cannot operate voice mail or work with long-distance calling cards.

Still, dealers found new ways to operate.

``It helps, but it doesn't totally solve the problem,'' said Lansing police Sgt. Mary Stevens. ``We have dealers who deal out in the street and yell at people as they come up in their cars. And we're seeing a lot more dopers use cell phones. About the time we started with the pay phones, we started to see more cell phone thefts.''

Police had to take old rotary pay phones out of storage, because they haven't been manufactured domestically in years.

Police today may be able to combine the benefits of old-fashioned rotary dials with modern technology.

Many of the ``smart phones'' now on the street can be converted to pulse dialing with just a flip of a switch, said Steve Klein, acting manager of Erintel in Virginia Beach, which owns pay phones throughout Hampton Roads. Converting those phones costs nothing.

``It's a piece of cake,'' Klein said. ``The phones we use today are `smart sets' with drug shutdown programs. We can actually go into the phone and pick the hours of operation. We can limit certain types of calls so the phone won't accept pager numbers. We can do it electronically from the office without even going out into the field.''

Few of the phones owned by Bell Atlantic Public Communications, which dominates the local market, have such sophisticated technology, said spokesman Jim Smith. Retrofitting an old-fashioned touch tone phone with smart set technology would cost hundreds of dollars each.

Bell Atlantic would never install a regular rotary dial, Smith said. They're too old, too clunky and too vulnerable to vandalism. Still, Bell Atlantic wants to help fight crime.

``If the city wants to talk, we're willing,'' Smith said.

Many South Norfolk business owners say they'd welcome the change.

``We're all for rotary phones,'' said Wilbert Harrell, who works at Bill's Hot Dogs and who is familiar with the strategy. His business has decided not to allow public phones on the property, for fear of encouraging criminals. ``To most people it wouldn't be any inconvenience. The only people who'd mind would be the drug dealers.''

Venus Lawrimore, who manages the Three Giant Food Store, said men often hang out near the public phones at her store after dark. A man was recently mugged in her parking lot.

``Sometimes they go in the back, where you can't see them,'' Lawrimore said. ``We had a `no loitering' sign, but they took it with them.''

But Robert White, manager of a barber shop on Liberty St., said many people without their own phones depend on public ones.

``Drug dealers aren't the only ones using pagers,'' White said. ``Most businessmen use them. People see the `public phone' sign and come in here all the time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

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PHONE TIPS

What can you do if you're concerned about a public phone near

you?

Contact the company that owns the telephone; the number is

usually printed on the phone box. That company may be able to help

in several ways, such as:

Switching touch-tone service to a pulse, which cannot be used to

call pagers;

Blocking incoming calls;

Restricting the hours of operation;

Installing better lighting or moving the phone to a safer