Deputies had unique and questionable surveillance techniques in 1960s Tampa

When Tampa was a hotbed of organized crime from the late 1800s through mid-1900s, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office charged the Vice Squad with cleaning up what the federal government deemed one of the most corrupt cities in the nation. The Tampa Bay Times has obtained a cache of Vice Squad reports from the 1950s and 1960s, which offer insight into their investigations and what they were up against.

TAMPA ― Gangsters had a nickname for Ellis Clifton, head of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Vice Squad in the 1960s.

They called him “Crusader Rabbit,” the title of an animated series based on a righteous hare.

It was partly to mock his large front teeth and partly due to his penchant for popping up out of nowhere to make an arrest.

It’s unclear if the gangsters were aware that Clifton also had the listening ability of a rabbit, an animal born with long-range hearing.

Clifton extended his hearing by using technology and questionable techniques, such as employing women to lure suspects from their homes so a listening device could be installed.

Mentions of telephone tapping and investigative assistance from the phone company are strewn throughout the cache of Vice Squad files obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

The Vice Squad tapped Charlie Wall’s phone in the weeks after the dean of the Tampa underworld was murdered in 1955. They wanted to learn if his wife knew anything about the crime. She did not.

When the Vice Squad repeatedly arrested a man for taking illegal lottery bets over the phone, the court ordered General Telephone Co. to discontinue service to the house.

Via a warrant, the Vice Squad would also have the telephone company turn over calls made from specific homes. One such target was Primo Lazzara, described in a report as an associate of the “Trafficante crime family” and owner of the Yellow House Bar, where illegal gambling took place. The Vice Squad worked with counterparts in Miami and New York City to track Lazzara’s calls to those cities.

Another report tells of the time that Clifton learned that a woman who sold numbers for the illegal lottery known as bolita used the same phone booth around the same time each week to call in bets to her boss.

Clifton and his deputies staked out that phone booth and the surrounding neighborhood.

Alerted by a deputy that the suspect’s car was approaching, Clifton hid a tape recorder inside the booth. Her 10-minute recorded conversation led to an arrest of a former deputy who had gotten into the numbers racket.

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Clifton’s most unusual and questionable listening technique is not included in the reports obtained by the Times. But it was front-page news.

According to Tampa newspaper archives:

A General Telephone Co. strike turned violent in the summer of 1963 when employees vandalized company equipment.

Ross Allen was suspected as among those coordinating the attacks.

So, Clifton and deputy Eddie Bond convinced one of Allen’s female friends to help in their investigation.

“She likes the intrigue and also likes to play cops and robbers,” Bond testified in court. He also said she was offered $250.

The woman testified that Clifton also promised to pardon her brother, who was on parole for armed robbery.

Bond said that the phone company provided him with bar money for the woman and a friend. The two women then lured Allen and his two roommates from their house with the promise of free drinks.

Bond testified that he and another deputy entered the house, calmed the dogs with drugged hamburgers, and hid a listening device in the stove.

Sheriff Ed Blackburn testified that he was unaware of the plan. The newspaper accounts do not mention whether the deputies had the court’s permission.

Clifton testified they did not hear anything that incriminated Allen, who discovered the device days later.

Allen and his roommates filed an invasion of privacy civil lawsuit against the phone company, sheriff, the two women, Bond, Clifton and the other deputy.

They were awarded $159. Neither the sheriff nor the phone company had to contribute.

The woman said she agreed to testify after learning that the dogs were drugged because, according to the Tampa Tribune, “it was permissible to harm humans, but not animals.”