To prevent drug dealers using pay phones, were the dial numbers removed?

[Robert Gift]

Or did they turn the ringer OFF so the criminal would not knowhen someone was calling?

Years ago my girlfriend and I went to a park to have a picnic.
Unfortunatelyery poor cell phone signal.

Nearbyvas a pay telephone!
From the payphone I called my cell phone. Coin returned because I did not answer.
Then Forwarded calls to the pay phone's number.   
Called the pay phone to ensure that we could hear it ring.

Just as we finish setting up the folding four-seat picnic table, the pay phone rings.
A hospital needed an emergency transport of blood platelets.
Never got back to that park.

[countryman]

Was it the norm in the U.S. that public phones could be called?
Not so in (Western) Germany. I suppose the hookup in the office wasn't designed to receive calls, so that it was technically impossible.
Allegedly this wasn't the case in Eastern Germany. While the numbers were not published, "insiders" could make use of the feature.
A callable booth became a subject in a West German TV sitcom in the 1970ies nonetheless, good for some pretty funny scenes 

Eventually the West German Post introduced a limited number of officially callable booths in the late 1980ies. But as foreseen in the sitcom, the project failed from the stubborn German nature. People got into disputes when they expected calls, while someone else used the phone, etc.

[Kellogg Kitt]

In the late 1980s to early 1990s, before cell phones became common, drug dealers used "beepers" i.e., numeric pagers.  Call the pager number, and after the tone, enter the desired call back number, which would be displayed on the pager.

In some areas, Touch-Tone pay phones were removed and replaced with rotary dial pay phones to prevent this use.   I cannot think of any specific examples, but I do remember hearing news reports in the 1990s, that this was done in some areas at the request of local authorities.  (Of course, this could have been easily defeated by using a pocket-size tone generator, readily available at Radio Shack!  Did any of them think of this?)

It is quite possible that some pay phones had their ringers turned off as a crime prevention measure, but I cannot remember hearing about any examples of that actually being done.

On the flip side of this question, some businesses used pay phones as their primary business phone, even having the pay phone number listed in the directory.  In that case, of course, it would have been necessary for the phone to ring.  I don't know why they did this -- maybe to prevent phone abuse or unauthorized long distance charges by employees or customers?  (May I please use your telephone?  Sure!  There is is.  Just put the money in the slot!)

In the "Brady Bunch" TV series, in one episode, the 6 kids were competing for the one phone so much that the parents had a pay phone installed installed in their home, just for the kids!  The kids were not allowed to use the parents' phone, so they had to pay for every call.  I wonder whether that ever happened in real life.

[Kellogg Kitt]

Was it the norm in the U.S. that public phones could be called?

Yes. 

Years ago (mostly when I was a teenager in the 1980s), I spent a lot of time "playing with" pay phones, and I noticed that most of them would ring and receive incoming calls with no problem.

A notable exception was Charge-a-Call phones (recently discussed elsewhere in this forum).  Although the number was on the card on the phone, the phone would never ring and could not receive incoming calls.  Anyone who dialed the Charge-a-Call number would receive an Automatic Intercept announcement, "The number you have reached, five five five [pause] two three six eight, is not in service [pause] for incoming calls."

[tubaman]

Was it the norm in the U.S. that public phones could be called?
Not so in (Western) Germany...

It was certainly the norm here in the UK. When I was small a friend of my parents, just up the road from us, never bothered to get his own phone as the village payphone was on the other side of the road opposite his house and he could hear it ringing from his front room.

[FABphones]

UK:
As a youngster I recall the kiosk phone number (as displayed on the centre dial card) would be given out to 'whoever' for calls. The public phone would ring, a passerby would answer, the caller would say something like, would you knock on the door of number ** and say (gives name) is calling? The passerby would usually oblige.

Alternatively a call at a preset time would be arranged. The recipient would be at the call box at the agreed time. If the phone was in use the caller would get the 'busy' tone.

[dsk]

The payphones in Norway had a buzzer equal to the one inside the Ericsson Ericofon.

[AL_as_needed]

While I am not sure if it is the official practice or not, Stewarts Shops (a northern NY chain) all tend to have payphone still in each store. On more than one occasion, I have seen them place and receive calls to other store locations with them. 

[ChrisW6ATV]

Pay phones always used to ring for me until the "third party" (or COCOT) phones became common; those rarely if ever ring.

When I carried a pager and not a cell phone, I would often call the operator from a pay phone and ask them to call it back to be sure it would ring if I needed a call back from a customer.

When I was young and had a friend without a phone, he gave me the numbers from pay phones near his house in advance, then later he would collect-call me as "Mr. Shell" (from the Shell gas/petrol station) or as "Mr. Devon" (from the phone on Devon Street). I would refuse the calla, then call back the matching phone so we could talk.

[Robert Gift]

It was certainly the norm here in the UK. When I was small a friend of my parents, just up the road from us, never bothered to get his own phone as the village payphone was on the other side of the road opposite his house and he could hear it ringing from his front room.

In the early 1980s my poor new neighbor could not afford a telephone.  Under the ground I ran a 4-conductor line to her house so that she could have a telephone. 
Then discovered some 1-976 calls on my line her boyfriend had made.
Luckily was able to get them cancelled.  (Think I.nvented the excuse that someones cordless telephone connected to our cordless phone base.)

Later did the telephone company have a free feature preventing calling 1-976 numbers?
Do 976 numbers still exist?

[TelePlay]

What's a 976 number?

[MMikeJBenN27]

Phone porn numbers.

Mike

[MMikeJBenN27]

I don't remember them doing that - they probably did, as many dope dealers used phone booths as their business offices, but I do remember that they removed a lot of phone booths for that reason.  Probably also removed ringers from them, never paid attention though.

Mike

[LarryInMichigan]

Phone numbers beginning with "976" were for various services which could charge huge per-minute fees to callers.  Many or most were used by less scrupulous businesses, and some tricked people into calling their numbers by disguising them.  A bit later, numbers with a "900" area code were used for the same purpose.

Larry

[Kellogg Kitt]

Under the ground I ran a 4-conductor line to her house so that she could have a telephone. 

Did you check your Telephone Company's tariffs to find out whether that was allowed?