Disconnecting crime in Boston

They went after guns. Then it was T-shirts. Now, in Mayor Thomas M. Menino's effort to make Boston's neighborhoods safer, officials have targeted a new possible accomplice in city crime: Pay phones.

Saying that pay phones attract drug dealers and prostitutes, city agencies are pushing for an amendment to the zoning code meant to restrict installation of coin-operated phones.

''What happens is [drug dealers] hang out there, the buyers come, make the deals," said Sal LaMattina, chairman of the East Boston Neighborhood Response Team. ''For some people that live in the neighborhood, they get a little nervous to walk by. They see the drug dealing that's going on."

Some community groups in South Boston and East Boston neighborhoods have complained about problems at some pay phones and say the measure would help in the city's effort to stem crime. But others say that pay phones across the city are a necessity, especially for residents who don't have access to cellphones or can't afford to maintain a phone at home.

City officials say that in some neighborhoods, pay phones have become way stations for crime. They are used both to set up deals and, in some cases, as drop-offs. Dealers often leave drugs in the coin-return slots for buyers to pick up, said Darryl Smith, the assistant commissioner for the city's Inspectional Services Department.

Last week, the city removed three pay phones from Roxbury that police suspected were sites for drug deals, Menino said.

''It's another tool we're going to use," Menino said of the amendment.

Currently, only an electrical permit is needed to install a pay phone; the city's zoning code has no provisions regulating where they can go. Under the proposed amendment, business and building owners would be required to seek approval from the city's zoning commission unless the phone would be inside a building.

Boston Redevelopment Authority officials, who are hoping to get the amendment to the commission by March, say the measure will allow the community to decide where new pay phones go. Pay phone companies must register with the state Department of Telecommunication and Energy but are not required to disclose the number of pay phones they operate. Currently, 102 companies are registered statewide, said Tim Shevlin, the department's executive director.

''You can't tell from this listing whether they own one pay phone or 1,000," said Shevlin, ''or where they're located."

Several pay phone companies declined to comment or could not be reached yesterday.

Some community groups want pay phones from certain areas where there are high concentrations of crime and violence.

''We feel that pay phones in the areas that have been designated as hot spots are detrimental to the community because they foster prostitution and drug use," said Sandra Williams of Project RIGHT, Rebuild and Improve Grove Hall Together, a nonprofit grass-roots agency in Dorchester.

One pay phone owner, Jose Dominguez, who owns Blue Hill Superette in Roxbury, removed a pay phone outside his store six months ago, after coming under pressure from the city.

''There were a bunch of guys there doing nothing," Dominguez said. ''The pay phones only bring those kind of people."

But Steven Godfrey, director of Elm Hill Family Service Center in Roxbury, which provides care to low-income residents, said too many residents don't have the means for personal phones and removing them will put them a greater disadvantage.

''I'm talking about the real folks out there who live under $5,000 a year," Godfrey said. ''They need access to a pay phone."

In East Boston, more than 100 pay phones dot Maverick and Central squares, with one almost at every other business, said Ernest Torgersen, executive director of East Boston Main Streets, a commercial district revitalization program. Some of them are broken and in some of the cubicles, the phones are missing. Others have become magnets for mounds of garbage.

About 85 percent of them were installed illegally, without the required electrical permit, LaMattina said.

In transportation depots and areas frequented by elderly or disabled people, Torgersen said, pay phones are absolutely necessary for people who need to be picked up.

Lieutenant Christopher Stratton of Boston Emergency Medical Services said it is difficult to single out what pay phones should have precedence.

''They're all important as far as I'm concerned," he said, ''when it comes to calling 911."