The wealthy, backbiting, litigious, renegade-cop-hiring residents of Lake Lotawana keep things churning
A caution light bounces in the wind as Terry Reed sits in the
driver’s seat of a black Chevy Trailblazer.
He’s parked on the shoulder of East Langsford Road, one of the
entrances to Lake Lotawana, a small community in southeastern Jackson
County. The back of his SUV holds campaign signs for an election that’s
10 days away. Reed hopes to unseat an incumbent on the board of
aldermen.
Reed is a husband, a father and a business owner. Entering city
politics was never an ambition. “The last thing I need to be doing is
running for alderman,” he says. Eventually, however, he came to believe
that the city suffered from chronic mismanagement and would benefit
from a new perspective.
On this overcast and windy Saturday morning, Reed is planting signs
with help of his wife, Janis, and a few friends. Reed’s signs feature a
stork trying to swallow a frog. The frog, symbolizing waste and
conflict, has its fingers wrapped around the neck of the stork, which
represents the city.
Developed in the late 1920s as a genteel resort for Kansas City’s
upper crust, Lake Lotawana has a mere 2,215 residents. Some visit only
on weekends. Owners of second homes in Lake Lotawana include
billionaire and philanthropist James Stowers, Americo Life Chairman
Michael Merriman and corporate lawyer James Polsinelli.
But to view Lake Lotawana as simply a place where captains of
industry wear sailing clothes would be a mistake. A convicted drug
dealer lives on the same street as a city alderman. A suspected
methamphetamine lab caught on fire the night of a police raid. One
resident accused the former police chief of tossing him in a psych ward
because he was gay.
The lake has attracted people of means since before the Great
Depression, but wealth hasn’t always brought wisdom. Recent city
initiatives have led to costly court battles. “We can hold our heads
high and say we’ve never filed a lawsuit we didn’t lose,” Reed
jokes.
At present, the city is dealing with a lawsuit filed by its former
police chief, George Randy Poletis.
Poletis became police chief after he had been run off his two
previous jobs. In Lake Lotawana, he developed a reputation for building
empires and nursing grudges. Some residents compare him with Dr. Jekyll
and J. Edgar Hoover. Others call Poletis a pro. “He solved every crime
across his desk,” Alderman David Needles says.
The board of aldermen fired Poletis a year ago. He maintains that he
was a consummate professional. His lawsuit draws a direct link between
his dismissal and his complaints that a city administrator acted
inappropriately around his officers.
The administrator is gone, and the mayor who wanted Poletis fired
decided not to run for re-election.
As Reed sits in his SUV, a pickup truck turns onto Langsford Road
from state Highway 7. Reed waves at the driver, a large man with a full
head of silver hair. It’s Poletis, driving to his lakefront home.
A blond woman seated at a table squeezes a lemon into her wheat beer.
Tonight’s entertainer, Lucas Bingham, performs Pink Floyd’s “Wish You
Were Here” on an acoustic guitar.
It’s a Thursday night at the Canoe Club. Customers jam the tables in
the dining room and on the patio. The restaurant’s young co-owners
— Andy Manz and Nick Calkins, friends who met at the University
of Central Missouri — bus tables and remove trash in an effort to
help the waitstaff concentrate on the guests.
Manz is a fourth-generation resident of Lake Lotawana. The
restaurant’s décor reflects his heritage. Manz salvaged wood
from old cabins to create a lodgelike feel in what had been a hair
salon.
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An old, ink-drawn map of Lake Lotawana that hangs under a stuffed
deer’s head lists some of the playful names — Bandit Bay,
Quantrill’s Cove — assigned to different parts of the lake.
Milton Thompson, a Jackson County parks commissioner, established
the Lake Lotawana Development Co. in 1928. He and his partners sold it
as a place where the city’s elite could enjoy the water without having
to travel too far. “A development so unusual and so conveniently
located as Lake Lotawana is bound to attract quickly the better class
of the outdoor-loving populace,” promised a company brochure.
The damming of Sni-a-Bar Creek began at daybreak on March 27, 1929,
and by noon, “the stream was lapping impotently against the new
impediment,” according to an account in the lake’s official
newspaper.
The dam created nearly 1,000 lakefront lots. Early settlers included
Chet Keys, an assistant U.S. attorney, and Lou Holland, the head of the
Chamber of Commerce. John Thompson, who built the Chevrolet plant in
the Leeds section of Kansas City, employed an American Indian to hew
the logs of his lodge.
Before it was a city, Lake Lotawana was just a homeowners’
association. To this day, the Lake Lotawana Community Association
controls the lake (it’s shaped like a map of Italy) and the streets
that surround it. The city was not incorporated until 1958.
Over the years, the lake’s “better class” took steps to preserve its
way of life.
Tobacco wholesaler Anthony Barber owns a large amount of property
adjacent to Lake Lotawana. In the late 1970s, residents fought his
attempt to build a feedlot for a thousand head of cattle. Their
protests prevailed, despite Barber’s substantial political connections.
(Harold “Doc” Holliday, who represented Kansas City’s East Side on the
Jackson County Legislature, was an especially ardent Barber supporter.
Barber contributed heavily to the black political club Freedom
Inc.)
Later, Barber tried to expand his rock quarry near the lake. Barber
said the quarry was a model operation, but Lake Lotawana residents
complained about dust and murky runoff.
In an attempt to keep Barber in check, the city of Lake Lotawana
annexed a piece of his quarry. That shifted the city’s western border
to Milton Thompson Road, where Pat Herrington lives. An auto shop
owner, Herrington quickly came to resent his new city of residence.
Herrington says former Lake Lotawana Mayor Arthur Van Hook and
others lied about the benefits of being annexed. Herrington tells
The Pitch that the city leaders he has dealt with care only
about their “crown jewel” — the lake.
Herrington was also annoyed by the fact that Lake Lotawana police
immediately began to hunt for speeders on Milton Thompson Road.
Noticing the frequency of the officers’ speed traps, he set up an
electronic sign in his yard, warning motorists to mind their pace. The
sign also editorialized: “Writing traffic tickets is not crime
fighting.”
Herrington’s protests did not endear him to the city’s police chief.
Squad cars, Herrington says, used to lurk behind rock piles in an
attempt to catch him committing an infraction. (Poletis says Herrington
was not harassed.)
It turns out that the chief’s bad side was a crowded place.
Randy Poletis had an intense desire to apprehend criminals. And a
tendency to overreact.
So concluded an evaluation of Poletis in 1976, his sixth year as a
police officer in Prairie Village. Poletis had joined the department in
1970, after a stint in the Army. He had grown up in Kansas City,
Kansas.
[page]
He was an ambitious young officer. Before becoming sergeant, he
served on a multi-agency narcotics squad that required undercover work.
Poletis liked action, and he liked authority. He once suggested to his
superiors that the department should institute formal guidelines for
how long officers could wear their hair.
His Prairie Village police career began to unravel at a department
Christmas party in 1985.
Poletis and other celebrants who didn’t want the festivities to end
took the party to Tasso’s, the Greek restaurant in Waldo. Poletis was
with his wife, Mary. By 2 a.m., he had consumed 15 beers.
At one point late in the night, a female officer, Bobbe Loomis,
asked to talk to Poletis. The exchange ended with Poletis slapping her
twice across the face and having to be restrained by his
co-workers.
In two lawsuits, Loomis and Poletis disputed the context of the
conversation. Loomis admitted to suggesting that the conversation not
take place in a hot tub, which made it sound as if such a scenario had
taken place. Mary Poletis heard the comment and took offense. Loomis
said in a deposition that she and Poletis tried to assure Mary that the
hot-tub mention had been a joke.
In Loomis’ version of events, Poletis and his wife were on the dance
floor for 15 minutes. Then, Poletis came toward Loomis, screamed at her
and slapped her so hard, she was unconscious when he delivered a second
blow.
Poletis claimed that Loomis was the instigator, that she got in his
wife’s face and pulled on her shoulder. Poletis said he struck Loomis
in an effort to protect his wife, who had been ill.
Multiple witnesses said Poletis called Loomis a “cunt” and other
derogatory names. “He looked like he was completely out of control,”
said one woman who witnessed the altercation.
After learning of the incident, Prairie Village’s chief of police,
Louis LeManske, recommended that Poletis be suspended and lose his
rank.
Poletis appealed that decision to the city’s Civil Service
Commission. The hearing revealed tension that went beyond a beer-soaked
bar fight. LeManske told the commission that he had begun to carry his
service revolver because he was fearful of Poletis. (The suspension was
upheld, but Poletis retained the rank of sergeant.)
A few months later, LeManske suspended Poletis for firing warning
shots, which was against procedure. In the fall of 1986, after Poletis
was accused of mishandling evidence, LeManske recommended to the mayor
that Poletis be fired.
Poletis tells The Pitch that he became the object of
retaliation. His lawyers had notified the city of his intent to file a
civil rights lawsuit at around the time that the warning shots were
fired. A judge dismissed the case in 1989. “I tell you why I lost,”
Poletis explains. “I wasn’t part of a protected class of people. I
wasn’t gay. I wasn’t black. I wasn’t a female. And the judge said I
didn’t have a right to have a lawsuit.”
Loomis, meanwhile, sued the police department for sexual harassment
and discrimination. She claimed that Poletis, in addition to hitting
her, had said women should not be police officers. She settled with the
city for a reported $85,000.
On January 26, 1987 — a few days before the Prairie Village
mayor accepted LeManske’s recommendation — Poletis started at the
Kansas City, Missouri, police academy. There, too, the chief sought to
fire Poletis.
Poletis ran into trouble for flouting the city’s residency
requirement. He rented a midtown apartment, but he and his wife spent
their days and nights in Prairie Village. Further complicating matters,
Poletis allowed the apartment landlord to claim that Poletis was
disabled and eligible for public assistance.
[page]
The police board fired Poletis on April 20, 1995, finding his
testimony on the residency matter “not credible.” Poletis appealed the
decision and also sued the manager of the apartment building. Both
cases were dismissed.
Who would issue his next police badge? The blots on his
résumé were in danger of overshadowing the commendations
that Poletis had earned in his 25-year career.
Poletis accepted an offer from Lake Lotawana three days after the
Kansas City police board hearing concluded.
Lake Lotawana needed a police chief to manage a force of three
full-time officers and two reserve officers. The board of aldermen
voted to hire Poletis on the recommendation of the city’s new mayor,
Stephen Nixon (now a Jackson County judge). Asked later about the
decision to hire Poletis, Nixon said he liked how the interview went.
He did not recall checking any references.
As the new chief, one of Poletis’ first tasks was to resolve a
dispute between neighbors. He dealt with the matter by having one of
them committed to a mental ward.
A resident named George Hedges wrote a letter to Mayor Nixon a few
weeks after Poletis became chief. “We need to talk at length as soon as
possible,” Hedges wrote. “My schedule is flexible. It would be prudent
if the police chief was present in the interest of time.”
Hedges’ problems began on Memorial Day weekend, 1994, when he
complained to his neighbor, Jim Snodgrass, about the noise from
Snodgrass’ stereo and bug zapper. Not satisfied with Snodgrass’
response, Hedges cranked up the volume on his television.
Residential lots in Lake Lotawana are only 50 feet wide, which puts
a premium on neighborliness. Hedges and Snodgrass were unable or
unwilling to coexist in peace. A police sergeant took a statement from
someone who thought he saw Snodgrass go onto Hedges’ property and use a
camera flash in his window. Snodgrass complained that Hedges made
threats through a lattice.
Poletis weighed the evidence and decided that Hedges required a
96-hour stay at Western Missouri Mental Health Center.
A part-time librarian in his early 50s, Hedges was not the picture
of stability. He took medication for depression and panic disorder.
Around Christmastime of the same year, he wrote a letter to the
Lotawana Express stating that his “next stop” was a funeral
home. He informed Nixon’s predecessor that he carried a handgun. “At
this point, I can safely predict the real possibility of a tragedy,” he
wrote in a letter to that mayor.
His strife with Snodgrass was not imaginary, however. Curtis
Dowdell, a former Lake Lotawana police sergeant, said later that he
thought Hedges and Snodgrass shared equal blame. Dowdell had told
Poletis that he considered Snodgrass to be a “redneck.”
With fault apparent on both sides, the police judged Hedges to be
the danger. The mental-health professional who signed the order for the
detention relied on statements by Snodgrass, Poletis, Dowdell and
another officer.
Hedges spent a long weekend at Western Missouri. Upon his release,
he found an attorney. Arthur Benson II argued in a federal lawsuit that
Poletis had never made a full investigation and instead determined that
it was the man who happened to be gay — Hedges — who
required the police escort to a mental facility. Benson argued that
“the untruths of Poletis” led to the commitment.
Poletis gave Benson opportunities to question his truthfulness. In a
deposition that was taken on November 21, 1997, Poletis said he quit
the Prairie Village police force because he had been passed over for a
promotion. LeManske, who retired in 1991, corrected the record. “He was
terminated,” LeManske said in his deposition.
[page]
Poletis also testified that he didn’t know Hedges was gay. (Hedges
is now deceased.) But Dowdell said in a deposition that he recalled
Poletis making reference to Hedges’ sexual orientation.
Benson did not get an opportunity to put Poletis on the stand. A
judge dismissed Hedges’ case. An appeals court upheld the decision,
ruling that the evidence showed Poletis relied more on his belief that
Hedges was dangerous than on the fact that he was gay.
Afterward, Poletis said he felt vindicated.
Poletis turned 50 around the time he became chief in Lake Lotawana.
In 2000, he sought a bigger job — that of Jackson County sheriff.
But two weeks before the Democratic primary, a Kansas City Star
story described the circumstances under which he had left the police
departments in Prairie Village and Kansas City. Poletis finished third
in the primary.
Wings clipped, Poletis strengthened his position as police chief in
Lake Lotawana. In 2002, he was given the authority to make hiring
decisions without having to go to the board of aldermen. He was also
appointed “director of emergency management,” which paid him an extra
$150 a month.
Poletis developed a reputation for bullying. Gary Miller, the former
president of the Prairie Township Rescue Unit (which answered Lake
Lotawana’s ambulance calls until 2003), sat down with Poletis after
Poletis became chief. “He pretty much told me he was going to run EMS
[emergency medical services],” Miller says. “From that day on, we
didn’t have a very good relationship.”
Miller felt targeted by Poletis. He says a Lake Lotawana police
officer used to follow his wife home from work.
“If you didn’t kowtow to him, you weren’t one of his favorites,”
Miller says.
Poletis says the ambulance service was “broken” and in need of an
upgrade. “I had no ax to grind personally against Gary Miller
whatsoever,” he says.
At a meeting of the board of aldermen on November 19, 2002, Lenda Sue
Harter said Lake Lotawana’s police budget was “stupid.” Harter noted
that the $504,804 budget was about half of what Blue Springs —
which is several times larger — paid for police protection.
Harter blamed the chief. “Poletis was always wanting more money,
more money, more money,” the former alderwoman tells The
Pitch.
Harter’s problems with Poletis went much deeper than the personnel
and equipment he sought in his 13 years as chief. Harter was friends
with George Hedges.
Harter was also friendly with Jo Ann Shirley, a city clerk who lost
her job in 1997. Shirley and Poletis had clashed, Harter says. Shirley
and Harter used to commiserate at Shirley’s house. Harter says police
cruisers often waited outside the house and then followed her home.
Harter has lived in Lake Lotawana with her husband, D.J., for 20
years. Both have served on the board of aldermen at various times. They
grate on some people — Harter says she and her husband “tell it
like it is.” At a recent board of aldermen meeting, eyes rolled when
D.J. took time to list some of his accomplishments.
“Those people are fools,” Alderman David Needles says. “I don’t know
any other way to put it.”
Terry Reed says Lenda Harter can come across as a “black helicopter”
type — someone quick to see conspiracy and evildoing. Eventually,
though, Reed came to believe that a lot of what she said was true.
For years, Harter had complained that city leaders were careless
about spending and other matters. Eventually, a lack of financial
discipline took its toll. In 2007, a group of residents created the
Campaign for Lotawana to try to raise $500,000 to pay the city’s debt.
“She knew exactly what was going on,” Reed says.
[page]
Much of the city’s financial trouble can be traced to its clumsy
efforts to expand its borders. The 2001 annexation, for instance, led
to a suit and a countersuit between the city and Anthony Barber. A
settlement, reached in 2004, allowed Barber to keep operating his
quarry. To this day, residents complain about noise and runoff.
In 2002, Lake Lotawana sued to keep Blue Springs from annexing
unincorporated land near state Highway 7. The effort was for naught,
however, as residents in that area rejected a proposal to be annexed
into Lake Lotawana.
Lake Lotawana leaders, working with a development lawyer named
Robert Freilich, continued to dream.
In 2004, over the objections of Lee’s Summit city officials, Lake
Lotawana annexed land near U.S. Highway 50. The city of Lee’s Summit
sued, and a judge eventually ruled that Lake Lotawana had no
jurisdiction in the area.
Lake Lotawana’s ambitions came at a price. Freilich billed the city
approximately $1.5 million for planning and legal costs.
The city racked up more litigation costs in a misguided attempt to
use tax-increment financing (an economic-development tool designed to
cure blight) to pay for improvements around the privately owned
lake.
The community association submitted the TIF plan to capture $5.3
million in taxes to pay for street, dam and sewer repairs. Appalled by
the efforts of the quasi-gated community, officials of the Lee’s Summit
School District (which stood to lose the most money as a result of the
tax breaks) filed a lawsuit. A judge voided the plan.
Reed complains that city leaders were too aggressive in pursuing
growth. “All of a sudden, we’re suing the heck out of everybody,” he
says.
Recent upgrades to the city’s sewer system are also proving to be
inadequate.
Arthur Van Hook, the mayor from 2001 to 2007, concedes that he may
have lacked the expertise to deal with what the position became in Lake
Lotawana’s go-go years. “I was in way over my capabilities,” says Van
Hook, a retired technical programmer.
In 2006, Van Hook and the board took a stab at professionalism and
hired Bill Kostar, a former mayor of Westwood, as a consultant. Kostar
became a full-time city administrator after Edward Stratemeier, a
lawyer, replaced Van Hook in 2007. But the drama was far from
ending.
Upon his hiring, Kostar took stock of Lake Lotawana. The sight wasn’t
pretty. “They had no money,” he tells The Pitch. “You could see
what a mess it was.”
In addition to being broke, the city had personnel issues. Kostar
says the city clerk, Rhonda Littrell, would not meet with the police
chief unless Kostar was present. The public works director, Patrick
Pendergist, also didn’t get along with Poletis, Kostar says.
The chief struck Kostar as someone who had been allowed to define
his own reality. The police department had accumulated items, such as a
Harley-Davidson, that Kostar thought were frivolous. (The motorcycle
was later sold.) Once, Poletis suggested that Kostar ask the city for a
car. “The city couldn’t have bought me a hubcap,” Kostar says.
Kostar also noticed that the police department had developed some
peculiar habits. He says he got a call from an elderly woman who
complained that she had been notified of a code violation by a police
officer — with his siren lights flashing.
[page]
“No one would ever tell Randy, ‘That’s not what you do,'” Kostar
says. “Well, that’s what I did.”
An uneasy relationship got worse in fall 2007, after a resident was
cited for driving under the influence.
After that stop, Stratemeier asked Kostar to arrange a meeting with
Poletis and Sgt. Raymond Draper. Stratemeier was responding to concerns
voiced by Lenda Harter, who felt that the DUI suspect had been a
longtime target of police abuse. Kostar says the mayor was simply
trying to ascertain the facts. Poletis argues that Stratemeier sought
to suppress the charge in order to curry Harter’s favor for a proposed
mill levy increase.
Next came allegations that Kostar sexually harassed officers in the
police department.
Poletis says he first observed Kostar paying “special attention” to
one of his officers in 2007. Later, he says, other officers reported to
him that they had been the subject of unwanted attention and, in some
instances, touching.
Poletis declined to speak to The Pitch about Kostar. (“I’m
not going to try my case in your newspaper,” he says.) His version of
events comes mainly from a settlement demand sent by his attorney to
city officials last spring. Attorney R. Pete Smith’s letter describes
incidents in which Kostar supposedly moaned with delight at the sight
of an officer’s buttocks and followed another officer into a
restroom.
The officers made written statements, according to Smith. But Kostar
says the claims are ridiculous. “The whole thing is simply absurd,” he
says.
Kostar believes Poletis manufactured the charges because Poletis
knew that Kostar, when he was mayor of Westwood back in 1992, signed a
proclamation recognizing Gay and Lesbian Pride Week. (Kostar says he is
not gay.)
Not long after the allegations surfaced, an anonymous flier began to
circulate throughout Lake Lotawana. It contained excerpts of newspaper
stories about Kostar’s decision to recognize Gay and Lesbian Pride Week
as well as his eventual resignation from the mayor’s post, in 2006.
(Kostar told a Star reporter he had been battling depression and
felt that he needed to step aside.)
The board of aldermen hired a lawyer to investigate the claims that
Kostar had sexually harassed members of the police department.
Ultimately, city officials concluded that Poletis’ allegations against
Kostar were bogus. In a September 26, 2008, letter to the Missouri
Commission on Human Rights, lawyers for the city say two of the
officers had assured the city they did not feel that their interactions
with Kostar were sexual in nature. (One of the officers declined
comment; another did not return The Pitch‘s phone calls.)
The third officer, the one who supposedly received “special
attention,” eventually quit the force. The city contends that the
officer never felt harassed and his real issue was with Poletis.
The fourth “victim,” Sgt. Draper, complained that Kostar touched him
as he tried to leave a room. He filed a complaint with the Commission
on Human Rights after being demoted for what the city termed “gross
insubordination.”
Draper, who left Lake Lotawana for another job in law enforcement,
maintains that Poletis ran a fine police department. “We both got
screwed royally,” he tells The Pitch. He declined to elaborate
on his accusation against Kostar.
The board fired Poletis in April 2008, citing his inability to work
with Kostar and the mayor. Poletis filed a lawsuit against the city and
Kostar last September. In court papers, the city refutes the former
chief’s assertion that he was a consummate professional.
Kostar left Lake Lotawana on September 26, 2008; he says the city
couldn’t afford him. Last fall, he accepted an offer to work for the
city of Lee’s Summit on a temporary basis. The offer was withdrawn
after the allegations contained in Poletis’ suit appeared on the front
page of the Lee’s Summit Journal. Kostar says the reporter who
wrote the story did not give him a chance to comment.
[page]
Stratemeier decided that one two-year term was enough and did not
seek re-election. (He did not respond to interview requests.)
Stratemeier’s successor, lawyer Howard Chamberlin, ran unopposed; he
is regarded as a Poletis supporter. Poletis’ critics fear that
Chamberlin will seek to rehire Poletis, in part to make his suit
against the city disappear.
Terry Reed got 82 votes in the April 7, 2009, election. His Ward 3
opponent, Charles Falkenberg, got 97.
The changing of the guard may give Poletis the votes he needs to
return. “I would love it if he got his old job back,” Alderman Needles
says.
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