3,000 calls made from single ‘drugs’ phone box

PHONE boxes have been taken over by drug dealers, police forces have warned, after the discovery of a BT “drug” phone in Nottingham.

Notts Police said they were aware of activity near the call box at the Bridgeway Shopping Centre and had deployed “high visibility patrols” to safeguard the area.

A shop worker called it a “hotline for drug dealers”, adding: “When you open in the morning and see a bunch of dishevelled people queuing up to make a phone call, they are not phoning the Department of Social Security.”

When asked why the phone box was being used more than 3,000 times a year – eight times more than from a typical BT payphone nationally – Neil Scoresby from BT said: “It could well be tourists who do not have mobile phones that work on our networks.”

But Chris Brummitt, from the local community trust, said she had only ever seen it used to arrange drug deals.

Similarly, Staffs Police have executed drug warrants to tackle activity around a BT phone box on Portland Street in Stoke-on-trent. Mandy Darling, a Torquay councillor, claimed BT had refused to remove a box in Torre as it made so much profit.

A BT spokesman said: “We would encourage anyone spotting illegal activity to report it to the police.”