Even more ingenious is the automatic holding device, which is available in some central offices. When it is connected to the victim's line, all he has to do is dial a single digit when he gets a vicious call. The dialing, which is unheard by the caller, activates equipment which holds the connection until the call can be traced, even if the calling party hangs up.

Now a call can be traced

in a minute

Another device has made it possible to trace calls in record time. Recently in Cincinnati, detectives were able to catch a man who made his calls between 2 and 6 a.m. from local phone booths. For 18 months he had harassed a business enemy, making as many as 16 calls a night. Thanks to the device, a "trouble recorder,” detectives were able to catch him exactly one minute after he made a cail.

Equally potent are two other devices which háve enabled police to get hitherto unobtainable evidence on telephone terrorists. One is the pen register, a piece of portable equipment that can be connected in central offices to the line of a prime suspect, perhaps spotted by an automatic holding device, or by deduction after an interview with the victim. Every time the suspect makes a call, a small pen in the equipment is activated, and the dialing pulses are recorded on a tape in the form of short dashes which can readily be translated into the number dialed. There is even a clock which automatically notes the time each call was made. The other device, more

Laws against telephone terrorists are often weak and enforcement even weaker

A New Jersey councilman, married and the father of two, was arrested for making as many as 100 calls in a day to women, posing as "Father Steiner" of Seton Hall University and "Dr. Barry" of the Kinsey Institute. Police estimated he had tormented perhaps 1,000 women since November, 1964.

Not so surprising were the number of teen-agers caught using the telephone for "kicks." The harassers of the Jewish couple in San Francisco turned out to be 14 teen-age boys, most from upper-middleincome families. In Burlington, Mass., an automatic holding device nabbed a 13-year-old who telephoned a bomb scare to the local high school. The call came less than six hours after the equipment was installed on the school's line. A few days later, the same device trapped a 12-year-old "telephone bomber" in Springfield, Mass.

Some of the bigger telephone companies, such as New York Telephone, have set up Annoyance Call Bureaus with specially trained personnel. Within five weeks of the announcement about the New York bureau, it received more than a thousand pleas for help. The telephone men have worked out a highly efficient routine to supplement mechanical hunting equipment. They ask the victim to keep a seven-day log of calls to determine a pattern. Then a member of the security force calls for an interview. The security man queries the victim on whether he or his family has received recent publicity such as marriage, birth or death, or a promotion or honor that might occasion jealousy. In a startling number of cases this brief interview turns up a prime suspect. Disappointed suitors, business enemies, relatives or neighbors harboring secret grudges seem particularly

prone to use the telephone. The terrorists who drove the suburban New Jersey family to near madness with the avalanche of fire engines and funeral wreaths were relatives living on the same block.

Why do obscene callers do it?

The motivations of the obscene phone caller are, of course, much more complex. Some psychiatrists have speculated that he is a latent homosexual who basically hates women and derives special pleasure from the fear and outrage he arouses. Some of these people are tragically ill and know it. One man, arrested in Baltimore, told the police, "Thank God you've got me. I need hospital treatment."

For all their recent triumphs, both the phone companies and local police officials are still depressed by the fact that judges consistently dismiss the telephone offender with a rap on the knuckles, often a suspended sentence. In some areas the law is woefully weak. In Washington, D. C., the penalty is only a $10 fine for disorderly conduct. Just across the border in Maryland and Virginia, terror by telephone brings maximum penalties of a $500 fine and a year in jail. Congressman Gallagher has, however, introduced a bill calling for much the same punishment in Washington, D. C. Twelve states (list at lower left) do not even have laws to cover telephone offenders. Perhaps in the past they were discouraged by the near-impossibility of catching them. Now the tone set, trap circuit, pen register, etc., are on the job, and all we need is a little cooperation from local courts and lawmakers to free our phones from fear and annoyance forever. (THE END)

aptly named, is the trap circuit. It, too, is wired into equipment which routes calls from the telephone of the suspected terrorist. Every time he calls, the machine kicks out a punched card with the calling number, called number, date and time.

The roundup of malefactors since the opening of the campaign in the spring of 1966 has produced a number of surprises. It was generally assumed that most telephone terrorists, particularly those who made obscene calls, were men. But in Garwood, N.J., operatives turned up two girls, 11 and 14, who had made more than 75 obscene calls to local taverns in a month and a half. Wakefield, Mass., caught two young married women whose husbands worked nights. Both aged 20, they picked numbers at random from the telephone book and got a special kick out of seeing lights go on when the phone rang in nearby houses. In Westfield, N. J., police arrested a 22-year-old babysitter who had made literally hundreds of nuisance telephone calls for more than three years. In Washington, D. C., among the first two arrested were a 19-year-old girl who'd made at least 40 obscene calls and a 14-year-old boy who'd made 21. Another shock was the number of ostensibly reputable citizens who played the dirty call game.

STATES WHICH DO NOT AS YET HAVE LAWS: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming

From information compiled by the Americon Telephone and Telegraph Co. as of April 1

Ta

To Prevent or Discourage Anonymous Callers

elephone companies' equipment is, after all, limited. They cannot simultaneously pursue thousands of annoying calls. So they urge you, the public, to make some routine preliminary maneuvers.

1. If for any reason you get some newspaper or television publicity, do not give your address. This is tantamount to handing out your phone number to the world.

2. If you are a single woman or a divorcee, never list your full name in the telephone book. ·will conAn initial-say, "M. Jones" ceal your sex but enable your friends to find you.

3. If you advertise for a job or a roommate, never put your home telephone number in the ad; use a post-office or newspaper box number instead.

4. Be very wary about sending a job resumé to companies advertising extravagantly

for female help. Some telephone wolves collect enough numbers and personal information this way to keep them going for years.

5. If you get an obscene or otherwise annoying call, hang up immediately. This frustrates the "breather" (who wants you to stay on the line crying, “Who's this?”). If the call is repeated, simply leave the phone off the hook for five or 10 minutes. The obscene caller especially wants the kick of your reaction.

6. Threatening calls are another matter, especially if the caller reveals an intimate knowledge of your personal life and movements. These should be reported to the police and the phone company without delay.

7. Teach your children that the phone is not a toy or device for playing “mysterious” pranks. Such pranks double the work of the phone company and make tracing the truly dangerous calls more difficult.