Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: TELECOM Moderator Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: US West and the War on Drugs Message-ID: <6248@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 11 Apr 90 05:35:46 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 40 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 246, Message 11 of 12 US West in Minneapolis is taking a technological leap backward in an effort to fight the drug problem in that community. What they have done is replaced touch-tone pay phones with rotary dial models at about eighteen locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul to make it harder for drug dealers to conduct business with telephone pagers. A common way of purchasing drugs is to telephone a drug dealer's pager and then punch in a phone number or some other pre-arranged code, according to police. The dealer responds by calling back to the phone number indicated on the digital pager, or by showing up with the drugs in the manner prescribed by the coded message. Because most pagers -- or at least the digital ones which require numeric entry -- won't work unless the caller has a touch-tone phone to use in entering the information, drug buyers and dealers cannot use the rotary phones. According to Minneapolis City Council member Jackie Cherryhomes, there has been a noticable decrease in drug traffic at the locations where the phones have been converted back to rotary. But I always thought modern, well-equipped drug dealers carried portable cellular phones with them, in which case the method of dialing would not matter. According to Ms. Cherryhomes, this is not the case. The use of digital beepers is far more common. US West has also converted a number of payphones in the Minneapolis area and elsewhere to be one-way outgoing lines. This has also helped reduce drug traffic in the area where those phones are located. Although there were requests to remove the pay phones entirely in those locations, US West resisted doing so saying many poor people in the community without phone service of their own depended heavily on the ability to use a nearby pay phone. Patrick Townson