New Wyandotte Co. commissioner accused of yelling racist, sexist slurs at Black teen in 2015
Editor’s note: This story includes quotes containing a racial slur.
When Kali Chatmon saw the campaign signs for Chuck Stites — a challenger for District 7 Commissioner for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas — she was transported back to 2015, when Stites called her a “Black nigger bitch,” she said.
It was the first time Chatmon, then 17 years old, had ever been called the racial slur.
“There’s a lot of bad memories that come up with that name,” Chatmon, 23, said in a phone interview. “That was the first time I’ve ever felt that my life was in danger. That’s the first time I’ve been threatened. That’s the first time I’ve ever been in a situation with a grown man and literally felt helpless.”
On Nov. 2, Stites, who is white, was elected as a new commissioner for the Unified Government, defeating incumbent Jim Walter. Stites received 1,481 votes and Walter received 1,042. But Chatmon is puzzled that a man she publicly accused of calling her a racial slur was elected for public office.
“I feel like for him, it went away pretty quickly,” Chatmon said. “But it’s something that I’ve had to carry into my adulthood.”
Stites did not respond to The Star’s numerous requests for comment.
Stites previously served as a member of the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department for 23 years. In 2015, he was the director of development for Schlitterbahn Water Park.
The incident involving Stites happened in May 2015, when Chatmon was on her way to Price Chopper to pick up groceries with her then boyfriend, Saomana Tualatamalelagi. On the way, she almost got into an accident with Stites. Stites got out of his car to inspect the back right of his bumper because he thought Chatmon had hit it. She hadn’t.
As Chatmon drove away from the scene, Stites shouted “Go on Black nigger bitch,” she recalled. She and Tualatamalelagi told KBI investigators the same thing. He also told her boyfriend, “Go back to Baltimore,” Chatmon said.
Tualatamalelagi is Pacific Islander. At the time of the incident, there were numerous protests happening in Baltimore after Freddie Gray died while in police custody. Tualatamalelagi confirmed to The Star he heard Stites yell the two slurs at Chatmon as well as “Go back to Baltimore.”
“I was pretty shocked that he said it and just said it so casually,” Tualatamalelagi said.
When they went back home, Chatmon told her parents about the encounter. Her parents started a petition asking Stites to step down or be removed from the Edwardsville City Council — Stites had been elected to the City Council in April. The petition received 1,660 signatures. Stites didn’t step down nor was he removed.
“It showed his true character — the incident did,” said Chatmon’s father, Cleveland Chatmon.
Chatmon filed a police report with the Bonner Springs Police Department about a week later, after she said she was harassed at school and at work for speaking up about the encounter. The Kansas Bureau of Investigations then opened an investigation into Stites later that year. In June 2016, KBI closed its investigation.
Stites denied using the racial and sexist slurs to KBI investigators. He said he did tell Chatmon to drive around his car and get out of there.
The investigation was turned over to former Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman. Gorman declined to charge Stites with disorderly conduct, which is a Class C misdemeanor in Kansas.
“I find that based upon the totality of the circumstances, i.e. the short nature in time of the exchange by Stites and that the parties were never at each other or approaching each other, no jury would find Stites guilty of the crime of disorderly conduct,” Gorman said in a letter to the KBI on June 24, 2016, which was obtained by The Star.
Chatmon said she never received an apology from Stites. She has not seen him ever since the incident. But the encounter changed the course of her life, she said. She attended Pittsburg State University and graduated with a degree in political science.
“It kind of just fueled a passion to get involved more into politics,” Chatmon said. “It’s literally altered every aspect of my life.”
Chatmon worries about if Stites will fairly represent his constituents and the residents of Wyandotte County, which is a diverse county. In Wyandotte, 40% of its population is white, 30% is Hispanic and 23% is Black, according to census data.
“Wyandotte County is a very diverse county,” she said. “It’s filled with Black and brown people, so it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around that they would elect a man like that to be in office.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 2:57 PM.
