By A.D. HOPKINS
SPECIAL TO THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb died Friday afternoon at age 88.
He was famous twice — once in the 1960s when his word was law in a county colonized by organized crime, and again in 2012 and 2013, when his earlier exploits were fictionalized in a television cop show.
His son Cliff said Lamb died at 2:25 p.m. at Mountain View Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for more than a week.
“It’s ironic, he died the same day his father did in 1939,” Cliff Lamb said. “It was just old age. He died with thousands of friends.”
Lamb converted the Clark County Sheriff’s Department from a mostly-rural force to a sophisticated urban agency, and was largely responsible for its consolidation with the Las Vegas Police Department into the present Metropolitan Police Department.
He was born April 10, 1927, in Alamo, a small ranching community about 95 miles north of Las Vegas, in Nye County. He was 11 years old when his father was killed in a rodeo accident, leaving 11 children.
“My oldest brother, Floyd, had a ranch by then. He took in me and my sister Wanda,” Lamb related in a 1999 interview.
To make ends meet in those Depression years the Lamb kids helped their mother can farm produce, and took a job cleaning the local schoolhouse.
“I can’t say I specifically wanted to grow up to be a lawman,” he said in May 2015. “My ambition was a steady paycheck.”
He served with the Army in the Pacific Theater during World War II and its aftermath, then returned to Nevada, becoming a Clark County deputy sheriff. A former MP, Lamb soon became chief of detectives. He left the department in 1954 to form a private detective agency. He ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 1958 but was beaten by the incumbent, Butch Leypoldt. In 1961 Leypoldt was appointed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and the County Commission named Lamb as his replacement. Lamb won re-election in 1962 and was sheriff for 18 years, longer than any other sheriff has held the job.
Lamb’s most active years in law enforcement coincided with rapid growth in the gaming industry, and much of that growth was controlled by people associated, at least formerly, with organized crime. To keep out the worst of that element, Lamb got the County Commission to pass the “work card law” that required anyone working in gaming to be fingerprinted and photographed and to notify the sheriff if he or she moved on to another job.
”We were constantly trying to show the (federal) government we were in control of gaming. That was the purpose of the work card law,” Lamb explained in 1999.
The law became more controversial because it was expanded to take in such non gaming professions as child care, even as organized crime’s influence in gaming, by most accounts, was dwindling to insignificance. But in 2015 Lamb still considered that law one of his best achievements.
“It speeds up things if some law enforcement agency comes here looking for somebody; we can tell them where this individual has been working. And sometimes it benefits the worker himself. Suppose something happens to the worker, and he’s not able to tell you how to contact his family. We can often trace him back through places he has formerly worked, find somebody who has known him a long time, and make the connection that way.”
In his prime Lamb was a shade over 6 feet 2 and weighed a wiry 210 pounds. He wasn’t above getting physical with hoods, most famously with Johnny Roselli, a high-ranking mobster associated with both the Chicago and Los Angeles outfits. In 1966 Roselli, previously a low-key operator, began throwing his weight around the Las Vegas Strip. Lamb sent him the instructions for newly-arrived wiseguys: Come downtown, register as an ex-felon, and reveal to the sheriff’s men your business in this community.
Roselli declined. So Lamb cornered him in a casino coffee shop, dragged him across his table, slapped him around a while, and threw him into a police car for a ride to the county jail. Although Roselli was always immaculately groomed, Lamb ordered a complimentary delousing. Roselli thought the treatment inhospitable, and left town quickly.
Roselli later became famous for helping the CIA arrange assassination attempts against Cuba dictator Fidel Castro, and was murdered shortly before he was supposed to testify to Congress about possible Mafia involvement in murdering President John F. Kennedy.
Lamb said he never shot a man in all his years of law enforcement. But it was widely whispered that some of his officers would simply execute particularly troublesome criminals, without trial, and secretly bury them in the boonies. Lamb firmly denied that in the 1999 interview, but acknowledged it was helpful that some bad guys believed it.
As urbanization spilled over the Las Vegas city limit, law enforcement in the increasingly urbanized county looked more and more like the tasks of its city counterpart. Meanwhile, jurisdictional confusion multiplied and people often called the wrong agency to report crimes. Also, though manpower was in constant under supply, much of it was being expended in duplicating administrative services on each side of the city limits.
So in 1973 Lamb became a key player in consolidating the Sheriff’s Department with the Las Vegas Police Department. Unlike most efforts at consolidation, the enabling legislation to create Metro slid through the Nevada Legislature with ease, and Lamb ended up in charge of the joint agency. Most people attributed that to Lamb’s political muscle — by then his brother Floyd was an important senator and his younger brother, Darwin, a county commissioner. But Lamb himself gave much of the credit to the late John Moran, who was then Las Vegas chief of police, and would become Lamb’s under sheriff.
“It wasn’t hard because Moran and I were friends,” said Lamb in the 1999 interview. Even members of the Las Vegas Police Department could see that it would be better if the agency were run by the sheriff, he said. “The Las Vegas department had several good chiefs who couldn’t keep the job,” said Lamb. “They’d make somebody mad and they’d get replaced. So an elected head was better.”
Lamb’s administration brought in a modern crime lab, a mobile crime lab, and the city’s first SWAT team, which was kept secret until one of its snipers killed a bank robber who was threatening to shoot a hostage. Metro was one of the first police agencies to use in-car computers or semiautomatic pistols as standard equipment.
Always strapped for manpower, Lamb was happy to use volunteers, within limits. He inherited from an earlier sheriff an organized Sheriff’s Mounted Posse of horsemen willing to ride up near-vertical mountainsides and pack out corpses from plane crashes. A mechanized version, the Sheriff’s Jeep Posse, also grew prominent during his own administration.
“They were mostly businessmen who did this at their own expense. I don’t know how many times they went out and found kids who got lost hiking and so forth. There was no way I could have taken 17 or 18 men off the street for a search operation, so they were absolutely essential. They were heroes.”
In 2015 he expressed the opinion that American law enforcement had become too militarized, and distant from the people it represented. “They’ve lost the personal touch we used to have. They’ve become regimented,” he said.
He agreed with President Obama’s executive order limiting the heavier military hardware available to law enforcement.
“We’re not in a war and that equipment isn’t needed,” Lamb said. “But he should be doing more to help smaller departments, that don’t have the funding, get the equipment they really do need.”
And almost in the same breath, he said Metro is an exception to the disturbing trends. “I think the present sheriff, Lombardo, has done an exceptional job. And the guy before him, too.”
In the 1970s Lamb was sometimes called the most powerful man in Nevada. Through the work card law he controlled who could or could not work in the city’s key industry, and many peripheral jobs. And unlike most police chiefs, he was answerable only to voters.
In 1977 he was indicted on income tax evasion allegations. Federal prosecutors tried to prove that his lifestyle, which included building a fine new home with guest house and horsemanship facilities, required more money than he earned as sheriff or reported on his taxes. They asserted that a $30,000 loan from the tough casino operator, Benny Binion, was never meant to be repaid, and therefore was income on which Lamb should have paid taxes.
But U.S. District Judge Roger D. Foley dismissed the charges, saying the IRS never proved anybody paid for the building materials, meaning they were probably gifts and not subject to taxation.
“Many fringe benefits come to a public official which may be accepted along with the honest discharge of duty,” said Foley.
He also ruled it was up to the government to prove the Binion loan was never repaid, and it failed to prove that. In 1999, Lamb said he did pay it back.
Lamb remained a free man, but politically wounded. Another wound came the following year when a former Las Vegas cop, who had come aboard Metro with consolidation, was accused of supplying confidential information to crime boss Tony Spilotro. Lamb fired the cop, but that same year, his former vice commander, John McCarthy, ran against Lamb. One of McCarthy’s accusations was that Metro had been “infiltrated” by organized crime. McCarthy didn’t produce a second example, but he won the election by a landslide.
McCarthy would be a one-term sheriff.
“I guess the public didn’t think my department was too bad,” Lamb observed years afterward. “Just one term later they elected my right-hand man, John Moran, to replace the guy who replaced me.”
Lamb cited his friendship with Moran as the reason he never sought the office again until 1994, when Moran didn’t run. Lamb lost that election to Jerry Keller, who spoke highly of his one-time campaign opponent.
“He was a man that was bigger than life,” Keller said. “A great leader and a great friend who led that (police) department through challenging moments.
“He was a man who will never be forgotten.”
Lamb spent most of his twilight years swapping yarns with friends, reading Louis L’Amour westerns, and rodeoing; he specialized in roping events. The corral at his home was kept so clean that friends joked “You go over to Ralph’s place, you gotta bring your own flies.”
He gave up his horses and the horse property only when his eyesight grew too dim to ride.
In 2012 and 2013, Lamb was the central character of “Vegas,” a CBS TV series based loosely on his tenure as sheriff. Dennis Quaid played Lamb as a cowboy dragooned into the lawman’s role and battling with organized crime characters trying to take over the town.
It was historically inaccurate but a well-made show that got good reviews; however, it failed to capture a large audience and lasted only one season.
__________________________________________________
By Jackie Valley and John Katsilometes; Las Vegas Sun
Published Friday, July 3, 2015
Ralph Lamb through the years
Sheriff Ralph Lamb speaks to members of the Las Vegas Press Club in August 1978. Ralph Lamb, the “cowboy sheriff” whose long law enforcement career in Southern Nevada later sparked a television drama, died this afternoon. He was 88.
Known for championing traditional policing tactics and favoring the pursuit of criminals over administrative duties, Lamb was sheriff from 1961 to 1978.
He led the merger of the sheriff’s department with city police in 1973 after a state mandate forced the consolidation. The result was the current Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is responsible for policing the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated areas of Clark County.
During Lamb’s final year in office, Metro had 778 commissioned officers with a $27 million budget. Today, the department has more than 2,000 commissioned officers and a $539 million budget.
Despite his old-school tendencies, Lamb directed several innovative initiatives, such as approving the installation of the first computers in patrol cars, the transition from using revolvers to semiautomatic pistols and the introduction of motorcycles into the department’s fleet. He also oversaw the opening of the first police substation.
The cowboy sheriff had his critics. In 1978, he lost the sheriff’s race to John McCarthy. A year prior, in 1977, he faced tax-evasion charges after IRS agents alleged he didn’t report more than $79,000 of earnings between 1970 and 1972; that case ultimately was dismissed.
Never fully out of the Las Vegas limelight, Lamb garnered headlines again in 2012 when “Vegas,” a CBS drama based on his life and career, premiered. Actor Dennis Quaid portrayed him in the show, which was canceled after its first season.
Among Lamb's most colorful anecdotes from his time as sheriff: arresting 74 Hells Angels, giving them haircuts and dismantling their motorcycles in the 1960s, according to a Los Angeles Times story. Another time he unabashedly delivered words to mobster John Roselli, who he had grabbed by the tie, in the middle of a crowded casino lobby.
“Ralph Lamb was not just a piece of Las Vegas, he was a piece of Americana,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said when reached by phone this afternoon. “He was probably the last cowboy sheriff in the United States. He led with an iron fist, but it was a fist tempered with mercy and justice.”
As a prominent defense attorney, Goodman recalled representing reputed mob overlord Nick Civella, who was known to have operated the Kansas City outfit. Lamb would hear of Civella’s plans to visit Las Vegas, primarily to dine at Larry Ruvo’s Venetian Restaurant, where his favorite dish was Angie Ruvo’s recipe for pork neck bones. Lamb would await Civella’s arrival at the airport, spot the mobster and turn him away.
Goodman finally asked to meet with Lamb to arrange a system under which Civella could at least dine in Las Vegas without visiting the city’s casinos.
“He wanted to meet me at 5 a.m. at my office, and he was there at that time,” Goodman said. “We walked in and he sat behind my desk, made sure he was not being recorded, and we reached an accord that my client could visit Las Vegas for this purpose. We shook hands, and the sheriff was a man of his word. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. We were on opposite sides of the fence for many years, we put up our dukes against each other, but we became best of friends. I was a sound admirer of his.”
Goodman added, “When you talk of dynasties in Las Vegas, or in Southern Nevada, the Lamb family was an all-time dynasty in Southern Nevada.”
Sen. Harry Reid issued a statement Friday evening offering condolences to the Lamb family, which he regards as a group of Nevada leaders. Reid attended school with Lamb's brother Larry and served in the state Legislature alongside his other brother, Floyd.
"Sheriff Ralph Lamb had a monumental impact on Nevada," Reid wrote. "He was a traditional Western lawman who brought southern Nevada law enforcement into modern times. At a time when Clark County was rapidly growing, Ralph kept our community safe and helped make southern Nevada what it is today."
Author and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who scripted the "Vegas" TV show, called Lamb "the last cowboy."
"Having worked with him on a book, a movie and a TV series I was lucky to have had a front seat to a legend," he said. "There will be no more Ralph Lambs."
Former Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, who applied to the Metro Police academy in 1978 when Lamb was in office, agrees. He remembers Lamb — one of his mentors — as a an officer at heart who commanded great respect from his employees, was tough on crime and wasn’t afraid to jump into the action during police activity.
“When Ralph Lamb was sheriff, he was the most powerful man in the state of Nevada,” Young said.
And he was someone you could count on if a need arose.
“He was simple, humble, right to the point,” Young said. “If he gave you his word, it was his word.”
Young said he would grab lunch or coffee with Lamb on a regular basis — a guaranteed time to hear dozens of Lamb’s stories about the old days, when Las Vegas was much smaller and policing much different. Lamb, who stayed connected to the law enforcement community, never shied away from giving advice, especially about the increasingly tough role of sheriff. He would often tell Young, “Don’t ever keep swinging, Billy!”
But law enforcement wasn’t his only passion. A true cowboy, Lamb cherished riding horses on his ranch and was instrumental in helping bring the National Finals Rodeo to Las Vegas.
On Friday, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo took to Twitter to express his thoughts about Lamb’s passing.
“The community loses a great (one) today,” he wrote. “Our condolences and support goes out to the Lamb family with the passing of Sheriff Lamb. Sheriff Lamb will be missed by all.”
If it weren’t for Lamb’s vision, the department wouldn’t be where it is today, Young said.
“Those of us who succeeded him as sheriff, we all tried to be like him in certain ways,” said Young, who served as sheriff from 2003-07. “Every sheriff wants to be tough, looked up to, feared and respected. Ralph Lamb had all those characteristics.”
Lamb, one of 11 children, was a Nevada boy who was born in Alamo, nearly 100 miles north of Las Vegas, and moved to Las Vegas when he was 11. During his later years, he lived on a ranch on Lone Mountain Road.
Funeral services for Lamb have not been announced. He will be buried with police honors, Metro officials said.
_______________________________________________________
Services will be at 1 p.m. Friday July 10, 2015 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Alta Vista Ward at 10550 W. Alta Dr., near Town Center Drive, the Metropolitan Police Department announced Tuesday.
Graveside honors will take place immediately after at Bunkers Memory Gardens Cemetery, 7251 W. Lone Mountain Road, near North Tenaya Way.
The church and cemetery have limited parking, the release said. Police encourage carpooling.
An earlier article reported services would be held at the church’s Charleston Ward.
Lamb is survived by his wife, the former Rae Cornell; two sons, Clifford and Clint, and two grandchildren; one brother, former Clark County Commissioner Darwin Lamb. He was preceded in death by five brothers, Floyd Lamb, Sheldon Lamb, Bill Lamb, Phil Lamb and Larry Lamb, and four sisters, Myrtle Howery, Erma McIntosh, Fae Mason and Wanda Peccole.
SPECIAL TO THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb died Friday afternoon at age 88.
He was famous twice — once in the 1960s when his word was law in a county colonized by organized crime, and again in 2012 and 2013, when his earlier exploits were fictionalized in a television cop show.
His son Cliff said Lamb died at 2:25 p.m. at Mountain View Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for more than a week.
“It’s ironic, he died the same day his father did in 1939,” Cliff Lamb said. “It was just old age. He died with thousands of friends.”
Lamb converted the Clark County Sheriff’s Department from a mostly-rural force to a sophisticated urban agency, and was largely responsible for its consolidation with the Las Vegas Police Department into the present Metropolitan Police Department.
He was born April 10, 1927, in Alamo, a small ranching community about 95 miles north of Las Vegas, in Nye County. He was 11 years old when his father was killed in a rodeo accident, leaving 11 children.
“My oldest brother, Floyd, had a ranch by then. He took in me and my sister Wanda,” Lamb related in a 1999 interview.
To make ends meet in those Depression years the Lamb kids helped their mother can farm produce, and took a job cleaning the local schoolhouse.
“I can’t say I specifically wanted to grow up to be a lawman,” he said in May 2015. “My ambition was a steady paycheck.”
He served with the Army in the Pacific Theater during World War II and its aftermath, then returned to Nevada, becoming a Clark County deputy sheriff. A former MP, Lamb soon became chief of detectives. He left the department in 1954 to form a private detective agency. He ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 1958 but was beaten by the incumbent, Butch Leypoldt. In 1961 Leypoldt was appointed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and the County Commission named Lamb as his replacement. Lamb won re-election in 1962 and was sheriff for 18 years, longer than any other sheriff has held the job.
Lamb’s most active years in law enforcement coincided with rapid growth in the gaming industry, and much of that growth was controlled by people associated, at least formerly, with organized crime. To keep out the worst of that element, Lamb got the County Commission to pass the “work card law” that required anyone working in gaming to be fingerprinted and photographed and to notify the sheriff if he or she moved on to another job.
”We were constantly trying to show the (federal) government we were in control of gaming. That was the purpose of the work card law,” Lamb explained in 1999.
The law became more controversial because it was expanded to take in such non gaming professions as child care, even as organized crime’s influence in gaming, by most accounts, was dwindling to insignificance. But in 2015 Lamb still considered that law one of his best achievements.
“It speeds up things if some law enforcement agency comes here looking for somebody; we can tell them where this individual has been working. And sometimes it benefits the worker himself. Suppose something happens to the worker, and he’s not able to tell you how to contact his family. We can often trace him back through places he has formerly worked, find somebody who has known him a long time, and make the connection that way.”
In his prime Lamb was a shade over 6 feet 2 and weighed a wiry 210 pounds. He wasn’t above getting physical with hoods, most famously with Johnny Roselli, a high-ranking mobster associated with both the Chicago and Los Angeles outfits. In 1966 Roselli, previously a low-key operator, began throwing his weight around the Las Vegas Strip. Lamb sent him the instructions for newly-arrived wiseguys: Come downtown, register as an ex-felon, and reveal to the sheriff’s men your business in this community.
Roselli declined. So Lamb cornered him in a casino coffee shop, dragged him across his table, slapped him around a while, and threw him into a police car for a ride to the county jail. Although Roselli was always immaculately groomed, Lamb ordered a complimentary delousing. Roselli thought the treatment inhospitable, and left town quickly.
Roselli later became famous for helping the CIA arrange assassination attempts against Cuba dictator Fidel Castro, and was murdered shortly before he was supposed to testify to Congress about possible Mafia involvement in murdering President John F. Kennedy.
Lamb said he never shot a man in all his years of law enforcement. But it was widely whispered that some of his officers would simply execute particularly troublesome criminals, without trial, and secretly bury them in the boonies. Lamb firmly denied that in the 1999 interview, but acknowledged it was helpful that some bad guys believed it.
As urbanization spilled over the Las Vegas city limit, law enforcement in the increasingly urbanized county looked more and more like the tasks of its city counterpart. Meanwhile, jurisdictional confusion multiplied and people often called the wrong agency to report crimes. Also, though manpower was in constant under supply, much of it was being expended in duplicating administrative services on each side of the city limits.
So in 1973 Lamb became a key player in consolidating the Sheriff’s Department with the Las Vegas Police Department. Unlike most efforts at consolidation, the enabling legislation to create Metro slid through the Nevada Legislature with ease, and Lamb ended up in charge of the joint agency. Most people attributed that to Lamb’s political muscle — by then his brother Floyd was an important senator and his younger brother, Darwin, a county commissioner. But Lamb himself gave much of the credit to the late John Moran, who was then Las Vegas chief of police, and would become Lamb’s under sheriff.
“It wasn’t hard because Moran and I were friends,” said Lamb in the 1999 interview. Even members of the Las Vegas Police Department could see that it would be better if the agency were run by the sheriff, he said. “The Las Vegas department had several good chiefs who couldn’t keep the job,” said Lamb. “They’d make somebody mad and they’d get replaced. So an elected head was better.”
Lamb’s administration brought in a modern crime lab, a mobile crime lab, and the city’s first SWAT team, which was kept secret until one of its snipers killed a bank robber who was threatening to shoot a hostage. Metro was one of the first police agencies to use in-car computers or semiautomatic pistols as standard equipment.
Always strapped for manpower, Lamb was happy to use volunteers, within limits. He inherited from an earlier sheriff an organized Sheriff’s Mounted Posse of horsemen willing to ride up near-vertical mountainsides and pack out corpses from plane crashes. A mechanized version, the Sheriff’s Jeep Posse, also grew prominent during his own administration.
“They were mostly businessmen who did this at their own expense. I don’t know how many times they went out and found kids who got lost hiking and so forth. There was no way I could have taken 17 or 18 men off the street for a search operation, so they were absolutely essential. They were heroes.”
In 2015 he expressed the opinion that American law enforcement had become too militarized, and distant from the people it represented. “They’ve lost the personal touch we used to have. They’ve become regimented,” he said.
He agreed with President Obama’s executive order limiting the heavier military hardware available to law enforcement.
“We’re not in a war and that equipment isn’t needed,” Lamb said. “But he should be doing more to help smaller departments, that don’t have the funding, get the equipment they really do need.”
And almost in the same breath, he said Metro is an exception to the disturbing trends. “I think the present sheriff, Lombardo, has done an exceptional job. And the guy before him, too.”
In the 1970s Lamb was sometimes called the most powerful man in Nevada. Through the work card law he controlled who could or could not work in the city’s key industry, and many peripheral jobs. And unlike most police chiefs, he was answerable only to voters.
In 1977 he was indicted on income tax evasion allegations. Federal prosecutors tried to prove that his lifestyle, which included building a fine new home with guest house and horsemanship facilities, required more money than he earned as sheriff or reported on his taxes. They asserted that a $30,000 loan from the tough casino operator, Benny Binion, was never meant to be repaid, and therefore was income on which Lamb should have paid taxes.
But U.S. District Judge Roger D. Foley dismissed the charges, saying the IRS never proved anybody paid for the building materials, meaning they were probably gifts and not subject to taxation.
“Many fringe benefits come to a public official which may be accepted along with the honest discharge of duty,” said Foley.
He also ruled it was up to the government to prove the Binion loan was never repaid, and it failed to prove that. In 1999, Lamb said he did pay it back.
Lamb remained a free man, but politically wounded. Another wound came the following year when a former Las Vegas cop, who had come aboard Metro with consolidation, was accused of supplying confidential information to crime boss Tony Spilotro. Lamb fired the cop, but that same year, his former vice commander, John McCarthy, ran against Lamb. One of McCarthy’s accusations was that Metro had been “infiltrated” by organized crime. McCarthy didn’t produce a second example, but he won the election by a landslide.
McCarthy would be a one-term sheriff.
“I guess the public didn’t think my department was too bad,” Lamb observed years afterward. “Just one term later they elected my right-hand man, John Moran, to replace the guy who replaced me.”
Lamb cited his friendship with Moran as the reason he never sought the office again until 1994, when Moran didn’t run. Lamb lost that election to Jerry Keller, who spoke highly of his one-time campaign opponent.
“He was a man that was bigger than life,” Keller said. “A great leader and a great friend who led that (police) department through challenging moments.
“He was a man who will never be forgotten.”
Lamb spent most of his twilight years swapping yarns with friends, reading Louis L’Amour westerns, and rodeoing; he specialized in roping events. The corral at his home was kept so clean that friends joked “You go over to Ralph’s place, you gotta bring your own flies.”
He gave up his horses and the horse property only when his eyesight grew too dim to ride.
In 2012 and 2013, Lamb was the central character of “Vegas,” a CBS TV series based loosely on his tenure as sheriff. Dennis Quaid played Lamb as a cowboy dragooned into the lawman’s role and battling with organized crime characters trying to take over the town.
It was historically inaccurate but a well-made show that got good reviews; however, it failed to capture a large audience and lasted only one season.
__________________________________________________
By Jackie Valley and John Katsilometes; Las Vegas Sun
Published Friday, July 3, 2015
Ralph Lamb through the years
Sheriff Ralph Lamb speaks to members of the Las Vegas Press Club in August 1978. Ralph Lamb, the “cowboy sheriff” whose long law enforcement career in Southern Nevada later sparked a television drama, died this afternoon. He was 88.
Known for championing traditional policing tactics and favoring the pursuit of criminals over administrative duties, Lamb was sheriff from 1961 to 1978.
He led the merger of the sheriff’s department with city police in 1973 after a state mandate forced the consolidation. The result was the current Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is responsible for policing the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated areas of Clark County.
During Lamb’s final year in office, Metro had 778 commissioned officers with a $27 million budget. Today, the department has more than 2,000 commissioned officers and a $539 million budget.
Despite his old-school tendencies, Lamb directed several innovative initiatives, such as approving the installation of the first computers in patrol cars, the transition from using revolvers to semiautomatic pistols and the introduction of motorcycles into the department’s fleet. He also oversaw the opening of the first police substation.
The cowboy sheriff had his critics. In 1978, he lost the sheriff’s race to John McCarthy. A year prior, in 1977, he faced tax-evasion charges after IRS agents alleged he didn’t report more than $79,000 of earnings between 1970 and 1972; that case ultimately was dismissed.
Never fully out of the Las Vegas limelight, Lamb garnered headlines again in 2012 when “Vegas,” a CBS drama based on his life and career, premiered. Actor Dennis Quaid portrayed him in the show, which was canceled after its first season.
Among Lamb's most colorful anecdotes from his time as sheriff: arresting 74 Hells Angels, giving them haircuts and dismantling their motorcycles in the 1960s, according to a Los Angeles Times story. Another time he unabashedly delivered words to mobster John Roselli, who he had grabbed by the tie, in the middle of a crowded casino lobby.
“Ralph Lamb was not just a piece of Las Vegas, he was a piece of Americana,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said when reached by phone this afternoon. “He was probably the last cowboy sheriff in the United States. He led with an iron fist, but it was a fist tempered with mercy and justice.”
As a prominent defense attorney, Goodman recalled representing reputed mob overlord Nick Civella, who was known to have operated the Kansas City outfit. Lamb would hear of Civella’s plans to visit Las Vegas, primarily to dine at Larry Ruvo’s Venetian Restaurant, where his favorite dish was Angie Ruvo’s recipe for pork neck bones. Lamb would await Civella’s arrival at the airport, spot the mobster and turn him away.
Goodman finally asked to meet with Lamb to arrange a system under which Civella could at least dine in Las Vegas without visiting the city’s casinos.
“He wanted to meet me at 5 a.m. at my office, and he was there at that time,” Goodman said. “We walked in and he sat behind my desk, made sure he was not being recorded, and we reached an accord that my client could visit Las Vegas for this purpose. We shook hands, and the sheriff was a man of his word. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. We were on opposite sides of the fence for many years, we put up our dukes against each other, but we became best of friends. I was a sound admirer of his.”
Goodman added, “When you talk of dynasties in Las Vegas, or in Southern Nevada, the Lamb family was an all-time dynasty in Southern Nevada.”
Sen. Harry Reid issued a statement Friday evening offering condolences to the Lamb family, which he regards as a group of Nevada leaders. Reid attended school with Lamb's brother Larry and served in the state Legislature alongside his other brother, Floyd.
"Sheriff Ralph Lamb had a monumental impact on Nevada," Reid wrote. "He was a traditional Western lawman who brought southern Nevada law enforcement into modern times. At a time when Clark County was rapidly growing, Ralph kept our community safe and helped make southern Nevada what it is today."
Author and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who scripted the "Vegas" TV show, called Lamb "the last cowboy."
"Having worked with him on a book, a movie and a TV series I was lucky to have had a front seat to a legend," he said. "There will be no more Ralph Lambs."
Former Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, who applied to the Metro Police academy in 1978 when Lamb was in office, agrees. He remembers Lamb — one of his mentors — as a an officer at heart who commanded great respect from his employees, was tough on crime and wasn’t afraid to jump into the action during police activity.
“When Ralph Lamb was sheriff, he was the most powerful man in the state of Nevada,” Young said.
And he was someone you could count on if a need arose.
“He was simple, humble, right to the point,” Young said. “If he gave you his word, it was his word.”
Young said he would grab lunch or coffee with Lamb on a regular basis — a guaranteed time to hear dozens of Lamb’s stories about the old days, when Las Vegas was much smaller and policing much different. Lamb, who stayed connected to the law enforcement community, never shied away from giving advice, especially about the increasingly tough role of sheriff. He would often tell Young, “Don’t ever keep swinging, Billy!”
But law enforcement wasn’t his only passion. A true cowboy, Lamb cherished riding horses on his ranch and was instrumental in helping bring the National Finals Rodeo to Las Vegas.
On Friday, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo took to Twitter to express his thoughts about Lamb’s passing.
“The community loses a great (one) today,” he wrote. “Our condolences and support goes out to the Lamb family with the passing of Sheriff Lamb. Sheriff Lamb will be missed by all.”
If it weren’t for Lamb’s vision, the department wouldn’t be where it is today, Young said.
“Those of us who succeeded him as sheriff, we all tried to be like him in certain ways,” said Young, who served as sheriff from 2003-07. “Every sheriff wants to be tough, looked up to, feared and respected. Ralph Lamb had all those characteristics.”
Lamb, one of 11 children, was a Nevada boy who was born in Alamo, nearly 100 miles north of Las Vegas, and moved to Las Vegas when he was 11. During his later years, he lived on a ranch on Lone Mountain Road.
Funeral services for Lamb have not been announced. He will be buried with police honors, Metro officials said.
_______________________________________________________
Services will be at 1 p.m. Friday July 10, 2015 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Alta Vista Ward at 10550 W. Alta Dr., near Town Center Drive, the Metropolitan Police Department announced Tuesday.
Graveside honors will take place immediately after at Bunkers Memory Gardens Cemetery, 7251 W. Lone Mountain Road, near North Tenaya Way.
The church and cemetery have limited parking, the release said. Police encourage carpooling.
An earlier article reported services would be held at the church’s Charleston Ward.
Lamb is survived by his wife, the former Rae Cornell; two sons, Clifford and Clint, and two grandchildren; one brother, former Clark County Commissioner Darwin Lamb. He was preceded in death by five brothers, Floyd Lamb, Sheldon Lamb, Bill Lamb, Phil Lamb and Larry Lamb, and four sisters, Myrtle Howery, Erma McIntosh, Fae Mason and Wanda Peccole.
By A.D. HOPKINS
SPECIAL TO THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb died Friday afternoon at age 88.
He was famous twice — once in the 1960s when his word was law in a county colonized by organized crime, and again in 2012 and 2013, when his earlier exploits were fictionalized in a television cop show.
His son Cliff said Lamb died at 2:25 p.m. at Mountain View Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for more than a week.
“It’s ironic, he died the same day his father did in 1939,” Cliff Lamb said. “It was just old age. He died with thousands of friends.”
Lamb converted the Clark County Sheriff’s Department from a mostly-rural force to a sophisticated urban agency, and was largely responsible for its consolidation with the Las Vegas Police Department into the present Metropolitan Police Department.
He was born April 10, 1927, in Alamo, a small ranching community about 95 miles north of Las Vegas, in Nye County. He was 11 years old when his father was killed in a rodeo accident, leaving 11 children.
“My oldest brother, Floyd, had a ranch by then. He took in me and my sister Wanda,” Lamb related in a 1999 interview.
To make ends meet in those Depression years the Lamb kids helped their mother can farm produce, and took a job cleaning the local schoolhouse.
“I can’t say I specifically wanted to grow up to be a lawman,” he said in May 2015. “My ambition was a steady paycheck.”
He served with the Army in the Pacific Theater during World War II and its aftermath, then returned to Nevada, becoming a Clark County deputy sheriff. A former MP, Lamb soon became chief of detectives. He left the department in 1954 to form a private detective agency. He ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 1958 but was beaten by the incumbent, Butch Leypoldt. In 1961 Leypoldt was appointed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and the County Commission named Lamb as his replacement. Lamb won re-election in 1962 and was sheriff for 18 years, longer than any other sheriff has held the job.
Lamb’s most active years in law enforcement coincided with rapid growth in the gaming industry, and much of that growth was controlled by people associated, at least formerly, with organized crime. To keep out the worst of that element, Lamb got the County Commission to pass the “work card law” that required anyone working in gaming to be fingerprinted and photographed and to notify the sheriff if he or she moved on to another job.
”We were constantly trying to show the (federal) government we were in control of gaming. That was the purpose of the work card law,” Lamb explained in 1999.
The law became more controversial because it was expanded to take in such non gaming professions as child care, even as organized crime’s influence in gaming, by most accounts, was dwindling to insignificance. But in 2015 Lamb still considered that law one of his best achievements.
“It speeds up things if some law enforcement agency comes here looking for somebody; we can tell them where this individual has been working. And sometimes it benefits the worker himself. Suppose something happens to the worker, and he’s not able to tell you how to contact his family. We can often trace him back through places he has formerly worked, find somebody who has known him a long time, and make the connection that way.”
In his prime Lamb was a shade over 6 feet 2 and weighed a wiry 210 pounds. He wasn’t above getting physical with hoods, most famously with Johnny Roselli, a high-ranking mobster associated with both the Chicago and Los Angeles outfits. In 1966 Roselli, previously a low-key operator, began throwing his weight around the Las Vegas Strip. Lamb sent him the instructions for newly-arrived wiseguys: Come downtown, register as an ex-felon, and reveal to the sheriff’s men your business in this community.
Roselli declined. So Lamb cornered him in a casino coffee shop, dragged him across his table, slapped him around a while, and threw him into a police car for a ride to the county jail. Although Roselli was always immaculately groomed, Lamb ordered a complimentary delousing. Roselli thought the treatment inhospitable, and left town quickly.
Roselli later became famous for helping the CIA arrange assassination attempts against Cuba dictator Fidel Castro, and was murdered shortly before he was supposed to testify to Congress about possible Mafia involvement in murdering President John F. Kennedy.
Lamb said he never shot a man in all his years of law enforcement. But it was widely whispered that some of his officers would simply execute particularly troublesome criminals, without trial, and secretly bury them in the boonies. Lamb firmly denied that in the 1999 interview, but acknowledged it was helpful that some bad guys believed it.
As urbanization spilled over the Las Vegas city limit, law enforcement in the increasingly urbanized county looked more and more like the tasks of its city counterpart. Meanwhile, jurisdictional confusion multiplied and people often called the wrong agency to report crimes. Also, though manpower was in constant under supply, much of it was being expended in duplicating administrative services on each side of the city limits.
So in 1973 Lamb became a key player in consolidating the Sheriff’s Department with the Las Vegas Police Department. Unlike most efforts at consolidation, the enabling legislation to create Metro slid through the Nevada Legislature with ease, and Lamb ended up in charge of the joint agency. Most people attributed that to Lamb’s political muscle — by then his brother Floyd was an important senator and his younger brother, Darwin, a county commissioner. But Lamb himself gave much of the credit to the late John Moran, who was then Las Vegas chief of police, and would become Lamb’s under sheriff.
“It wasn’t hard because Moran and I were friends,” said Lamb in the 1999 interview. Even members of the Las Vegas Police Department could see that it would be better if the agency were run by the sheriff, he said. “The Las Vegas department had several good chiefs who couldn’t keep the job,” said Lamb. “They’d make somebody mad and they’d get replaced. So an elected head was better.”
Lamb’s administration brought in a modern crime lab, a mobile crime lab, and the city’s first SWAT team, which was kept secret until one of its snipers killed a bank robber who was threatening to shoot a hostage. Metro was one of the first police agencies to use in-car computers or semiautomatic pistols as standard equipment.
Always strapped for manpower, Lamb was happy to use volunteers, within limits. He inherited from an earlier sheriff an organized Sheriff’s Mounted Posse of horsemen willing to ride up near-vertical mountainsides and pack out corpses from plane crashes. A mechanized version, the Sheriff’s Jeep Posse, also grew prominent during his own administration.
“They were mostly businessmen who did this at their own expense. I don’t know how many times they went out and found kids who got lost hiking and so forth. There was no way I could have taken 17 or 18 men off the street for a search operation, so they were absolutely essential. They were heroes.”
In 2015 he expressed the opinion that American law enforcement had become too militarized, and distant from the people it represented. “They’ve lost the personal touch we used to have. They’ve become regimented,” he said.
He agreed with President Obama’s executive order limiting the heavier military hardware available to law enforcement.
“We’re not in a war and that equipment isn’t needed,” Lamb said. “But he should be doing more to help smaller departments, that don’t have the funding, get the equipment they really do need.”
And almost in the same breath, he said Metro is an exception to the disturbing trends. “I think the present sheriff, Lombardo, has done an exceptional job. And the guy before him, too.”
In the 1970s Lamb was sometimes called the most powerful man in Nevada. Through the work card law he controlled who could or could not work in the city’s key industry, and many peripheral jobs. And unlike most police chiefs, he was answerable only to voters.
In 1977 he was indicted on income tax evasion allegations. Federal prosecutors tried to prove that his lifestyle, which included building a fine new home with guest house and horsemanship facilities, required more money than he earned as sheriff or reported on his taxes. They asserted that a $30,000 loan from the tough casino operator, Benny Binion, was never meant to be repaid, and therefore was income on which Lamb should have paid taxes.
But U.S. District Judge Roger D. Foley dismissed the charges, saying the IRS never proved anybody paid for the building materials, meaning they were probably gifts and not subject to taxation.
“Many fringe benefits come to a public official which may be accepted along with the honest discharge of duty,” said Foley.
He also ruled it was up to the government to prove the Binion loan was never repaid, and it failed to prove that. In 1999, Lamb said he did pay it back.
Lamb remained a free man, but politically wounded. Another wound came the following year when a former Las Vegas cop, who had come aboard Metro with consolidation, was accused of supplying confidential information to crime boss Tony Spilotro. Lamb fired the cop, but that same year, his former vice commander, John McCarthy, ran against Lamb. One of McCarthy’s accusations was that Metro had been “infiltrated” by organized crime. McCarthy didn’t produce a second example, but he won the election by a landslide.
McCarthy would be a one-term sheriff.
“I guess the public didn’t think my department was too bad,” Lamb observed years afterward. “Just one term later they elected my right-hand man, John Moran, to replace the guy who replaced me.”
Lamb cited his friendship with Moran as the reason he never sought the office again until 1994, when Moran didn’t run. Lamb lost that election to Jerry Keller, who spoke highly of his one-time campaign opponent.
“He was a man that was bigger than life,” Keller said. “A great leader and a great friend who led that (police) department through challenging moments.
“He was a man who will never be forgotten.”
Lamb spent most of his twilight years swapping yarns with friends, reading Louis L’Amour westerns, and rodeoing; he specialized in roping events. The corral at his home was kept so clean that friends joked “You go over to Ralph’s place, you gotta bring your own flies.”
He gave up his horses and the horse property only when his eyesight grew too dim to ride.
In 2012 and 2013, Lamb was the central character of “Vegas,” a CBS TV series based loosely on his tenure as sheriff. Dennis Quaid played Lamb as a cowboy dragooned into the lawman’s role and battling with organized crime characters trying to take over the town.
It was historically inaccurate but a well-made show that got good reviews; however, it failed to capture a large audience and lasted only one season.
__________________________________________________
By Jackie Valley and John Katsilometes; Las Vegas Sun
Published Friday, July 3, 2015
Ralph Lamb through the years
Sheriff Ralph Lamb speaks to members of the Las Vegas Press Club in August 1978. Ralph Lamb, the “cowboy sheriff” whose long law enforcement career in Southern Nevada later sparked a television drama, died this afternoon. He was 88.
Known for championing traditional policing tactics and favoring the pursuit of criminals over administrative duties, Lamb was sheriff from 1961 to 1978.
He led the merger of the sheriff’s department with city police in 1973 after a state mandate forced the consolidation. The result was the current Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is responsible for policing the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated areas of Clark County.
During Lamb’s final year in office, Metro had 778 commissioned officers with a $27 million budget. Today, the department has more than 2,000 commissioned officers and a $539 million budget.
Despite his old-school tendencies, Lamb directed several innovative initiatives, such as approving the installation of the first computers in patrol cars, the transition from using revolvers to semiautomatic pistols and the introduction of motorcycles into the department’s fleet. He also oversaw the opening of the first police substation.
The cowboy sheriff had his critics. In 1978, he lost the sheriff’s race to John McCarthy. A year prior, in 1977, he faced tax-evasion charges after IRS agents alleged he didn’t report more than $79,000 of earnings between 1970 and 1972; that case ultimately was dismissed.
Never fully out of the Las Vegas limelight, Lamb garnered headlines again in 2012 when “Vegas,” a CBS drama based on his life and career, premiered. Actor Dennis Quaid portrayed him in the show, which was canceled after its first season.
Among Lamb's most colorful anecdotes from his time as sheriff: arresting 74 Hells Angels, giving them haircuts and dismantling their motorcycles in the 1960s, according to a Los Angeles Times story. Another time he unabashedly delivered words to mobster John Roselli, who he had grabbed by the tie, in the middle of a crowded casino lobby.
“Ralph Lamb was not just a piece of Las Vegas, he was a piece of Americana,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said when reached by phone this afternoon. “He was probably the last cowboy sheriff in the United States. He led with an iron fist, but it was a fist tempered with mercy and justice.”
As a prominent defense attorney, Goodman recalled representing reputed mob overlord Nick Civella, who was known to have operated the Kansas City outfit. Lamb would hear of Civella’s plans to visit Las Vegas, primarily to dine at Larry Ruvo’s Venetian Restaurant, where his favorite dish was Angie Ruvo’s recipe for pork neck bones. Lamb would await Civella’s arrival at the airport, spot the mobster and turn him away.
Goodman finally asked to meet with Lamb to arrange a system under which Civella could at least dine in Las Vegas without visiting the city’s casinos.
“He wanted to meet me at 5 a.m. at my office, and he was there at that time,” Goodman said. “We walked in and he sat behind my desk, made sure he was not being recorded, and we reached an accord that my client could visit Las Vegas for this purpose. We shook hands, and the sheriff was a man of his word. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. We were on opposite sides of the fence for many years, we put up our dukes against each other, but we became best of friends. I was a sound admirer of his.”
Goodman added, “When you talk of dynasties in Las Vegas, or in Southern Nevada, the Lamb family was an all-time dynasty in Southern Nevada.”
Sen. Harry Reid issued a statement Friday evening offering condolences to the Lamb family, which he regards as a group of Nevada leaders. Reid attended school with Lamb's brother Larry and served in the state Legislature alongside his other brother, Floyd.
"Sheriff Ralph Lamb had a monumental impact on Nevada," Reid wrote. "He was a traditional Western lawman who brought southern Nevada law enforcement into modern times. At a time when Clark County was rapidly growing, Ralph kept our community safe and helped make southern Nevada what it is today."
Author and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who scripted the "Vegas" TV show, called Lamb "the last cowboy."
"Having worked with him on a book, a movie and a TV series I was lucky to have had a front seat to a legend," he said. "There will be no more Ralph Lambs."
Former Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, who applied to the Metro Police academy in 1978 when Lamb was in office, agrees. He remembers Lamb — one of his mentors — as a an officer at heart who commanded great respect from his employees, was tough on crime and wasn’t afraid to jump into the action during police activity.
“When Ralph Lamb was sheriff, he was the most powerful man in the state of Nevada,” Young said.
And he was someone you could count on if a need arose.
“He was simple, humble, right to the point,” Young said. “If he gave you his word, it was his word.”
Young said he would grab lunch or coffee with Lamb on a regular basis — a guaranteed time to hear dozens of Lamb’s stories about the old days, when Las Vegas was much smaller and policing much different. Lamb, who stayed connected to the law enforcement community, never shied away from giving advice, especially about the increasingly tough role of sheriff. He would often tell Young, “Don’t ever keep swinging, Billy!”
But law enforcement wasn’t his only passion. A true cowboy, Lamb cherished riding horses on his ranch and was instrumental in helping bring the National Finals Rodeo to Las Vegas.
On Friday, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo took to Twitter to express his thoughts about Lamb’s passing.
“The community loses a great (one) today,” he wrote. “Our condolences and support goes out to the Lamb family with the passing of Sheriff Lamb. Sheriff Lamb will be missed by all.”
If it weren’t for Lamb’s vision, the department wouldn’t be where it is today, Young said.
“Those of us who succeeded him as sheriff, we all tried to be like him in certain ways,” said Young, who served as sheriff from 2003-07. “Every sheriff wants to be tough, looked up to, feared and respected. Ralph Lamb had all those characteristics.”
Lamb, one of 11 children, was a Nevada boy who was born in Alamo, nearly 100 miles north of Las Vegas, and moved to Las Vegas when he was 11. During his later years, he lived on a ranch on Lone Mountain Road.
Funeral services for Lamb have not been announced. He will be buried with police honors, Metro officials said.
_______________________________________________________
Services will be at 1 p.m. Friday July 10, 2015 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Alta Vista Ward at 10550 W. Alta Dr., near Town Center Drive, the Metropolitan Police Department announced Tuesday.
Graveside honors will take place immediately after at Bunkers Memory Gardens Cemetery, 7251 W. Lone Mountain Road, near North Tenaya Way.
The church and cemetery have limited parking, the release said. Police encourage carpooling.
An earlier article reported services would be held at the church’s Charleston Ward.
Lamb is survived by his wife, the former Rae Cornell; two sons, Clifford and Clint, and two grandchildren; one brother, former Clark County Commissioner Darwin Lamb. He was preceded in death by five brothers, Floyd Lamb, Sheldon Lamb, Bill Lamb, Phil Lamb and Larry Lamb, and four sisters, Myrtle Howery, Erma McIntosh, Fae Mason and Wanda Peccole.
SPECIAL TO THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb died Friday afternoon at age 88.
He was famous twice — once in the 1960s when his word was law in a county colonized by organized crime, and again in 2012 and 2013, when his earlier exploits were fictionalized in a television cop show.
His son Cliff said Lamb died at 2:25 p.m. at Mountain View Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for more than a week.
“It’s ironic, he died the same day his father did in 1939,” Cliff Lamb said. “It was just old age. He died with thousands of friends.”
Lamb converted the Clark County Sheriff’s Department from a mostly-rural force to a sophisticated urban agency, and was largely responsible for its consolidation with the Las Vegas Police Department into the present Metropolitan Police Department.
He was born April 10, 1927, in Alamo, a small ranching community about 95 miles north of Las Vegas, in Nye County. He was 11 years old when his father was killed in a rodeo accident, leaving 11 children.
“My oldest brother, Floyd, had a ranch by then. He took in me and my sister Wanda,” Lamb related in a 1999 interview.
To make ends meet in those Depression years the Lamb kids helped their mother can farm produce, and took a job cleaning the local schoolhouse.
“I can’t say I specifically wanted to grow up to be a lawman,” he said in May 2015. “My ambition was a steady paycheck.”
He served with the Army in the Pacific Theater during World War II and its aftermath, then returned to Nevada, becoming a Clark County deputy sheriff. A former MP, Lamb soon became chief of detectives. He left the department in 1954 to form a private detective agency. He ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 1958 but was beaten by the incumbent, Butch Leypoldt. In 1961 Leypoldt was appointed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and the County Commission named Lamb as his replacement. Lamb won re-election in 1962 and was sheriff for 18 years, longer than any other sheriff has held the job.
Lamb’s most active years in law enforcement coincided with rapid growth in the gaming industry, and much of that growth was controlled by people associated, at least formerly, with organized crime. To keep out the worst of that element, Lamb got the County Commission to pass the “work card law” that required anyone working in gaming to be fingerprinted and photographed and to notify the sheriff if he or she moved on to another job.
”We were constantly trying to show the (federal) government we were in control of gaming. That was the purpose of the work card law,” Lamb explained in 1999.
The law became more controversial because it was expanded to take in such non gaming professions as child care, even as organized crime’s influence in gaming, by most accounts, was dwindling to insignificance. But in 2015 Lamb still considered that law one of his best achievements.
“It speeds up things if some law enforcement agency comes here looking for somebody; we can tell them where this individual has been working. And sometimes it benefits the worker himself. Suppose something happens to the worker, and he’s not able to tell you how to contact his family. We can often trace him back through places he has formerly worked, find somebody who has known him a long time, and make the connection that way.”
In his prime Lamb was a shade over 6 feet 2 and weighed a wiry 210 pounds. He wasn’t above getting physical with hoods, most famously with Johnny Roselli, a high-ranking mobster associated with both the Chicago and Los Angeles outfits. In 1966 Roselli, previously a low-key operator, began throwing his weight around the Las Vegas Strip. Lamb sent him the instructions for newly-arrived wiseguys: Come downtown, register as an ex-felon, and reveal to the sheriff’s men your business in this community.
Roselli declined. So Lamb cornered him in a casino coffee shop, dragged him across his table, slapped him around a while, and threw him into a police car for a ride to the county jail. Although Roselli was always immaculately groomed, Lamb ordered a complimentary delousing. Roselli thought the treatment inhospitable, and left town quickly.
Roselli later became famous for helping the CIA arrange assassination attempts against Cuba dictator Fidel Castro, and was murdered shortly before he was supposed to testify to Congress about possible Mafia involvement in murdering President John F. Kennedy.
Lamb said he never shot a man in all his years of law enforcement. But it was widely whispered that some of his officers would simply execute particularly troublesome criminals, without trial, and secretly bury them in the boonies. Lamb firmly denied that in the 1999 interview, but acknowledged it was helpful that some bad guys believed it.
As urbanization spilled over the Las Vegas city limit, law enforcement in the increasingly urbanized county looked more and more like the tasks of its city counterpart. Meanwhile, jurisdictional confusion multiplied and people often called the wrong agency to report crimes. Also, though manpower was in constant under supply, much of it was being expended in duplicating administrative services on each side of the city limits.
So in 1973 Lamb became a key player in consolidating the Sheriff’s Department with the Las Vegas Police Department. Unlike most efforts at consolidation, the enabling legislation to create Metro slid through the Nevada Legislature with ease, and Lamb ended up in charge of the joint agency. Most people attributed that to Lamb’s political muscle — by then his brother Floyd was an important senator and his younger brother, Darwin, a county commissioner. But Lamb himself gave much of the credit to the late John Moran, who was then Las Vegas chief of police, and would become Lamb’s under sheriff.
“It wasn’t hard because Moran and I were friends,” said Lamb in the 1999 interview. Even members of the Las Vegas Police Department could see that it would be better if the agency were run by the sheriff, he said. “The Las Vegas department had several good chiefs who couldn’t keep the job,” said Lamb. “They’d make somebody mad and they’d get replaced. So an elected head was better.”
Lamb’s administration brought in a modern crime lab, a mobile crime lab, and the city’s first SWAT team, which was kept secret until one of its snipers killed a bank robber who was threatening to shoot a hostage. Metro was one of the first police agencies to use in-car computers or semiautomatic pistols as standard equipment.
Always strapped for manpower, Lamb was happy to use volunteers, within limits. He inherited from an earlier sheriff an organized Sheriff’s Mounted Posse of horsemen willing to ride up near-vertical mountainsides and pack out corpses from plane crashes. A mechanized version, the Sheriff’s Jeep Posse, also grew prominent during his own administration.
“They were mostly businessmen who did this at their own expense. I don’t know how many times they went out and found kids who got lost hiking and so forth. There was no way I could have taken 17 or 18 men off the street for a search operation, so they were absolutely essential. They were heroes.”
In 2015 he expressed the opinion that American law enforcement had become too militarized, and distant from the people it represented. “They’ve lost the personal touch we used to have. They’ve become regimented,” he said.
He agreed with President Obama’s executive order limiting the heavier military hardware available to law enforcement.
“We’re not in a war and that equipment isn’t needed,” Lamb said. “But he should be doing more to help smaller departments, that don’t have the funding, get the equipment they really do need.”
And almost in the same breath, he said Metro is an exception to the disturbing trends. “I think the present sheriff, Lombardo, has done an exceptional job. And the guy before him, too.”
In the 1970s Lamb was sometimes called the most powerful man in Nevada. Through the work card law he controlled who could or could not work in the city’s key industry, and many peripheral jobs. And unlike most police chiefs, he was answerable only to voters.
In 1977 he was indicted on income tax evasion allegations. Federal prosecutors tried to prove that his lifestyle, which included building a fine new home with guest house and horsemanship facilities, required more money than he earned as sheriff or reported on his taxes. They asserted that a $30,000 loan from the tough casino operator, Benny Binion, was never meant to be repaid, and therefore was income on which Lamb should have paid taxes.
But U.S. District Judge Roger D. Foley dismissed the charges, saying the IRS never proved anybody paid for the building materials, meaning they were probably gifts and not subject to taxation.
“Many fringe benefits come to a public official which may be accepted along with the honest discharge of duty,” said Foley.
He also ruled it was up to the government to prove the Binion loan was never repaid, and it failed to prove that. In 1999, Lamb said he did pay it back.
Lamb remained a free man, but politically wounded. Another wound came the following year when a former Las Vegas cop, who had come aboard Metro with consolidation, was accused of supplying confidential information to crime boss Tony Spilotro. Lamb fired the cop, but that same year, his former vice commander, John McCarthy, ran against Lamb. One of McCarthy’s accusations was that Metro had been “infiltrated” by organized crime. McCarthy didn’t produce a second example, but he won the election by a landslide.
McCarthy would be a one-term sheriff.
“I guess the public didn’t think my department was too bad,” Lamb observed years afterward. “Just one term later they elected my right-hand man, John Moran, to replace the guy who replaced me.”
Lamb cited his friendship with Moran as the reason he never sought the office again until 1994, when Moran didn’t run. Lamb lost that election to Jerry Keller, who spoke highly of his one-time campaign opponent.
“He was a man that was bigger than life,” Keller said. “A great leader and a great friend who led that (police) department through challenging moments.
“He was a man who will never be forgotten.”
Lamb spent most of his twilight years swapping yarns with friends, reading Louis L’Amour westerns, and rodeoing; he specialized in roping events. The corral at his home was kept so clean that friends joked “You go over to Ralph’s place, you gotta bring your own flies.”
He gave up his horses and the horse property only when his eyesight grew too dim to ride.
In 2012 and 2013, Lamb was the central character of “Vegas,” a CBS TV series based loosely on his tenure as sheriff. Dennis Quaid played Lamb as a cowboy dragooned into the lawman’s role and battling with organized crime characters trying to take over the town.
It was historically inaccurate but a well-made show that got good reviews; however, it failed to capture a large audience and lasted only one season.
__________________________________________________
By Jackie Valley and John Katsilometes; Las Vegas Sun
Published Friday, July 3, 2015
Ralph Lamb through the years
Sheriff Ralph Lamb speaks to members of the Las Vegas Press Club in August 1978. Ralph Lamb, the “cowboy sheriff” whose long law enforcement career in Southern Nevada later sparked a television drama, died this afternoon. He was 88.
Known for championing traditional policing tactics and favoring the pursuit of criminals over administrative duties, Lamb was sheriff from 1961 to 1978.
He led the merger of the sheriff’s department with city police in 1973 after a state mandate forced the consolidation. The result was the current Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is responsible for policing the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated areas of Clark County.
During Lamb’s final year in office, Metro had 778 commissioned officers with a $27 million budget. Today, the department has more than 2,000 commissioned officers and a $539 million budget.
Despite his old-school tendencies, Lamb directed several innovative initiatives, such as approving the installation of the first computers in patrol cars, the transition from using revolvers to semiautomatic pistols and the introduction of motorcycles into the department’s fleet. He also oversaw the opening of the first police substation.
The cowboy sheriff had his critics. In 1978, he lost the sheriff’s race to John McCarthy. A year prior, in 1977, he faced tax-evasion charges after IRS agents alleged he didn’t report more than $79,000 of earnings between 1970 and 1972; that case ultimately was dismissed.
Never fully out of the Las Vegas limelight, Lamb garnered headlines again in 2012 when “Vegas,” a CBS drama based on his life and career, premiered. Actor Dennis Quaid portrayed him in the show, which was canceled after its first season.
Among Lamb's most colorful anecdotes from his time as sheriff: arresting 74 Hells Angels, giving them haircuts and dismantling their motorcycles in the 1960s, according to a Los Angeles Times story. Another time he unabashedly delivered words to mobster John Roselli, who he had grabbed by the tie, in the middle of a crowded casino lobby.
“Ralph Lamb was not just a piece of Las Vegas, he was a piece of Americana,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said when reached by phone this afternoon. “He was probably the last cowboy sheriff in the United States. He led with an iron fist, but it was a fist tempered with mercy and justice.”
As a prominent defense attorney, Goodman recalled representing reputed mob overlord Nick Civella, who was known to have operated the Kansas City outfit. Lamb would hear of Civella’s plans to visit Las Vegas, primarily to dine at Larry Ruvo’s Venetian Restaurant, where his favorite dish was Angie Ruvo’s recipe for pork neck bones. Lamb would await Civella’s arrival at the airport, spot the mobster and turn him away.
Goodman finally asked to meet with Lamb to arrange a system under which Civella could at least dine in Las Vegas without visiting the city’s casinos.
“He wanted to meet me at 5 a.m. at my office, and he was there at that time,” Goodman said. “We walked in and he sat behind my desk, made sure he was not being recorded, and we reached an accord that my client could visit Las Vegas for this purpose. We shook hands, and the sheriff was a man of his word. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. We were on opposite sides of the fence for many years, we put up our dukes against each other, but we became best of friends. I was a sound admirer of his.”
Goodman added, “When you talk of dynasties in Las Vegas, or in Southern Nevada, the Lamb family was an all-time dynasty in Southern Nevada.”
Sen. Harry Reid issued a statement Friday evening offering condolences to the Lamb family, which he regards as a group of Nevada leaders. Reid attended school with Lamb's brother Larry and served in the state Legislature alongside his other brother, Floyd.
"Sheriff Ralph Lamb had a monumental impact on Nevada," Reid wrote. "He was a traditional Western lawman who brought southern Nevada law enforcement into modern times. At a time when Clark County was rapidly growing, Ralph kept our community safe and helped make southern Nevada what it is today."
Author and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who scripted the "Vegas" TV show, called Lamb "the last cowboy."
"Having worked with him on a book, a movie and a TV series I was lucky to have had a front seat to a legend," he said. "There will be no more Ralph Lambs."
Former Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, who applied to the Metro Police academy in 1978 when Lamb was in office, agrees. He remembers Lamb — one of his mentors — as a an officer at heart who commanded great respect from his employees, was tough on crime and wasn’t afraid to jump into the action during police activity.
“When Ralph Lamb was sheriff, he was the most powerful man in the state of Nevada,” Young said.
And he was someone you could count on if a need arose.
“He was simple, humble, right to the point,” Young said. “If he gave you his word, it was his word.”
Young said he would grab lunch or coffee with Lamb on a regular basis — a guaranteed time to hear dozens of Lamb’s stories about the old days, when Las Vegas was much smaller and policing much different. Lamb, who stayed connected to the law enforcement community, never shied away from giving advice, especially about the increasingly tough role of sheriff. He would often tell Young, “Don’t ever keep swinging, Billy!”
But law enforcement wasn’t his only passion. A true cowboy, Lamb cherished riding horses on his ranch and was instrumental in helping bring the National Finals Rodeo to Las Vegas.
On Friday, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo took to Twitter to express his thoughts about Lamb’s passing.
“The community loses a great (one) today,” he wrote. “Our condolences and support goes out to the Lamb family with the passing of Sheriff Lamb. Sheriff Lamb will be missed by all.”
If it weren’t for Lamb’s vision, the department wouldn’t be where it is today, Young said.
“Those of us who succeeded him as sheriff, we all tried to be like him in certain ways,” said Young, who served as sheriff from 2003-07. “Every sheriff wants to be tough, looked up to, feared and respected. Ralph Lamb had all those characteristics.”
Lamb, one of 11 children, was a Nevada boy who was born in Alamo, nearly 100 miles north of Las Vegas, and moved to Las Vegas when he was 11. During his later years, he lived on a ranch on Lone Mountain Road.
Funeral services for Lamb have not been announced. He will be buried with police honors, Metro officials said.
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Services will be at 1 p.m. Friday July 10, 2015 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Alta Vista Ward at 10550 W. Alta Dr., near Town Center Drive, the Metropolitan Police Department announced Tuesday.
Graveside honors will take place immediately after at Bunkers Memory Gardens Cemetery, 7251 W. Lone Mountain Road, near North Tenaya Way.
The church and cemetery have limited parking, the release said. Police encourage carpooling.
An earlier article reported services would be held at the church’s Charleston Ward.
Lamb is survived by his wife, the former Rae Cornell; two sons, Clifford and Clint, and two grandchildren; one brother, former Clark County Commissioner Darwin Lamb. He was preceded in death by five brothers, Floyd Lamb, Sheldon Lamb, Bill Lamb, Phil Lamb and Larry Lamb, and four sisters, Myrtle Howery, Erma McIntosh, Fae Mason and Wanda Peccole.
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