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.