DOYLE MURPHY
File photo of St. Louis City Sheriff Vernon Betts.
St. Louis City Sheriff Vernon Betts grew so enraged that an employee failed to support him politically that he boasted of demoting the staffer, repeatedly referred to him using racial slurs and said he could have fired him for his actions, according to audio obtained by the Riverfront Times. The employee has now filed a lawsuit against Betts.
Deputy Sheriff Steve Chalmers, 65, was demoted from the Civil Process Servers Unit to the Security Unit in November 2020 after seven years as a deputy, according to the lawsuit Chalmers filed last September. When Chalmers asked Betts why he'd been demoted, he was told it was because he didn't have a single sign supporting Betts' candidacy in his yard.
The suit also alleges that Betts regularly referred to Chalmers using the racial slurs "n****r," "ni**a," "negro," "boy" and "Black ass." Chalmers’ suit accuses Betts of expecting political loyalty from him because Chalmers is Black; Betts, who is also Black, didn't expect similar loyalty from white deputies.
The demotion changed Chalmers’ daily schedule, forcing him to work evenings as well as Saturdays and Sundays.
A person who knew both men called Betts after the demotion and confronted him about his treatment of Chalmers. Three minutes of the call were made available to the RFT under the condition that the interlocutor remain anonymous and his voice disguised.
In the audio, Betts seems agitated that he has been interrupted by the caller while he was watching the Disney film Mulan.
“Know what else I'm gonna do? Know what else I'm going to do? Since you called me, and I was sitting watching Mulan the movie with my family and since you interrupted me, what I’m going to do, since he gonna tell you shit — I’m going to do his ass worse than that when I see him on Monday. Running around the city telling everyone what done happened to his Black ass when I should have fired his Black ass,” Betts says.
In the tape, Betts says numerous times that he feels he was wronged by Chalmers because of a lack of political support.
The audio below contains profane language and racial slurs.
“Whether you love me or not, you don’t mess with me,” Betts says a little later in the conversation. “And that’s what he did. And that's what he is. And he gonna get worse than that if he act out one more person to call me and bother me about what somebody done to that Black ass n****r. I got one more. He better go somewhere and sit his ass down and be glad he got a job because he fucked with me. And he didn’t get out there and help me do what he should have been doing.”
"That negro didn't help me," Betts adds a little later. "That negro didn't put out one damn [sign]."
The RFT has published four snippets of the recorded conversation. Much of the audio obtained by the RFT consists of cross talk between the caller and Betts, which makes it impossible to release without compromising the caller's identity. Multiple times during the heated exchange, the caller attempts to take Betts to task as Betts denies he's done anything wrong.
"What's worse than the white folks doing it to us, is us doing it to ourselves," the caller says.
Betts replies, "The n****r is lucky I didn't fire him."
Betts was elected sheriff in November 2016 and took office the following January. He won re-election four years later. The St. Louis Sheriff’s Office serves eviction notices and court papers, and is the security service for the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court.
Sheriff's office spokesman Gregg Christian said that the office couldn't comment on pending litigation.
Chalmers' attorney, Jerryl Christmas, says his client has the right to support whomever he wants politically and that Chalmers has "managed the ground game" for numerous local campaigns in the past.
Of Betts' use of the n-word, Christmas says, "People may think that because [Betts] is Black, it's not racist. But it is. It's very racist."
The lawsuit notes that Chalmers is dark-skinned and that lighter-skinned Black employees in the office were not subjected to the same treatment as Chalmers was.
"Colorism is a real issue still in the Black community," Christmas says. "It's a relic of slavery and the favoritism of people with light skin stones."
The lawsuit also alleges that Chalmers drew his boss's ire when Chalmers supported Michelle Sherrod in her 2018 state senate campaign against Steve Roberts Jr, who the lawsuit says Betts referred to as his "money man." At the time, Betts' chief deputy was Roberts' father, Steve Roberts Sr.
The lawsuit filed in 22nd Judicial Circuit Court means that it would likely be litigated in one of the very buildings Betts is charged with keeping safe. The suit claims Betts is guilty of workplace discrimination and retaliation.
Both the lawsuit and the recorded phone call paint a portrait of the sheriff as a man inclined toward braggadocio. At one point during the phone call, Betts says, apropos of nothing, "I got more votes than any politician in the state of Missouri."
One day in December 2020, Betts pointed to a judge and told Chalmers that the judge was so scared of Betts that if Betts told the judge "to shit in the middle of the court building," he would, according to the suit.
In February 2021, a lawyer requested Chalmers' employment records from the sheriff's office, which tipped Betts off that his deputy was planning legal action. The lawsuit says that Betts subsequently banned Chalmers from working at the Civil Courts building, referred to him as "a clown" to local media, and denied two requests Chalmers made for secondary employment as a security officer.
In the audio, Betts can be heard saying of Chalmers, "I should have fired his Black ass."
The caller asks, "For what?"
"For fucking with me," Betts says.
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