A former Delaware State Police trooper was sentenced to prison Tuesday for punching a handcuffed teen who had pranked his home last year.
Dempsey Walters was sentenced to one year in prison. He is the first Delaware police officer in recent memory to receive a prison sentence for violence perpetrated while in uniform.
Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of official misconduct and assault for fracturing the teen's face as he sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser, as well as for assaulting another teen unrelated to the prank.
"You are a coward, that's all you are, with a damn costume," the father of one of his young victims told Walters in court during the hearing. This was the first time Walters looked at his victims' parents.
In court, Walters apologized to his victims while arguing that post-traumatic stress from a police chase the year before was at the root of his conduct that day.
Prosecutors argued for a year and a half sentence, noting Walters tried to cover up his assault on the restrained teen and "weaponized" the power of Delaware State Police and other agencies to "terrorize and assault two teenagers."
And while the prison sentence may be seen as accountability for Walters, his actions were enabled by several officers involved in a multi-agency manhunt involving a state police helicopter, police dogs and long rifles.
A state police spokesperson wrote that an internal investigation “identified policy violations” involving other troopers, but declined to provide details, citing the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights − a hotly debated law that allows police to conceal how they administer accountability within their ranks.
Meanwhile, the family of the victims said they are planning a civil rights lawsuit.
The crime
In August 2023, a 15-year-old and others were playing “ding-dong ditch” in Elsmere.
Security video from Walters' home shows the 15-year-old boy kicking the trooper's door about 8:30 p.m., then running away. According to the Delaware Department of Justice, after reviewing the security video, the trooper's then-girlfriend called Walters at work and told him what had happened.
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Deputy Attorney General Dan McBride said audio of that call makes it clear Walters knew his home had been pranked and that there was nobody trying to enter his home, that kids had kicked his door and there was no emergency.
"He knows there is no danger," McBride told the judge.
Walters called in his then-girlfriend's report as an “attempted home invasion,” which saw a swarm of police bearing dogs and long rifles, as well as a helicopter, descend on the area.
At that time, Walters then used a police database to look up the address of a 17-year-old whom he had four days earlier gotten into a verbal altercation with after encountering the kid smoking marijuana at the entrance to his development.
Walters went to the home of the 17-year-old and, at gunpoint, dragged him from the doorway, forced him to the ground and dropped his knee into his back, injuring it permanently, McBride said. In court, his mother described the horror of hearing her child scream over the phone while the police, who are supposed to be trusted, harm him.
"Every day I kick myself because I told him to open the door," the woman told the judge.
McBride said Walters also lied to investigators about using a police database to pull the teenager's address. The boy had nothing to do with the prank and was held in custody for several hours, and police gave differing accounts of why to his mother afterward, eventually calling it a “misunderstanding.”
After detaining the uninvolved 17-year-old, Walters learned that the true culprit, a 15-year-old boy, had been caught in the manhunt a few blocks away.
When Walters arrived, the 15-year-old was face-down on the ground while other troopers were "very forcibly" detaining the kid, McBride said, adding they had it "under control."
However, Walters then hit the 15-year-old with a knee drop similar to the one applied to the 17-year-old, McBride said.
Walters shook his head at hearing McBride's description.
With the 15-year-old’s hands cuffed behind him, another trooper took the boy to a state police SUV and placed him in the rear passenger seat. McBride said Walters then paced like a "caged bull" until another officer confirmed the 15-year-old was the one that kicked his door.
This is where Walters attempted to engage in a cover-up of his actions, McBride said.
He turned off his bodycam, but the camera stays on for 30 seconds after being turned off. Footage shows Walters going to the police cruiser, shouldering another officer aside and striking the kid.
The 15-year-old, who had a concussion and fractured eye socket that required 11 screws and a mesh to repair, remained unattended in the police SUV for nearly an hour, according to the teen's attorney.
Is prison appropriate?
Deputy Attorney General McBride argued that the judge should sentence Walters to 18 months in prison.
He said the crime was particularly egregious because Walters betrayed the public's trust as a police officer and perpetrated violence against children as a way to gain "personal vengeance" for perceived "disrespect."
He also lied about it, McBride said, and hadn't shown proper remorse.
"He is a bully and a brutal one at that," McBride said.
John Malik, Walters' defense attorney, told the court his client's actions were due to a "psychic scar" of traumatic stress, not being a bully.
Malik addressed the court at length about a December 2022 episode in which Walters responded to a report of a suspicious person with a gun. He said that person was a fugitive who pointed that stolen handgun at Walters as he responded.
Walters described the incident as preparing "for my own mortality" because he fell down while pursuing the fugitive and thought he was going to be shot. The incident culminated in a long police chase that ended with more than a dozen officers opening fire and killing the suspect on I-95.
Malik said Walters was diagnosed and sought treatment for post-traumatic stress shortly following his assault on the teens. He argued that the court sentences someone differently if they drive drunk, crash and injure someone compared with if they have a medical emergency while driving and injure someone.
"This doesn't happen without the PTSD," Malik told the court.
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McBride, the prosecutor, said it was "convenient" that Walters began seeking treatment for PTSD after assaulting the children and not after the incident that Malik said caused it.
"This isn't something that is being made up," Malik said in response.
Malik also noted that other officers have similarly hit detained people and avoided prison time, asking the judge for "parity" with those cases.
Waters, who at times wept, apologized to his victims and their families in court. He said he felt the prank was a personal attack on his home with his now-wife as the victim and his reaction was due to his trauma, as well as his personal and professional lives colliding.
Judge Francis Jones said after weighing the arguments he felt some form of prison time was warranted because of the vulnerability of the victims, as well as the betrayal of public trust.
Questions over larger accountability
After the hearing, the families of the victims said they didn't buy the PTSD explanation. They were glad he received some prison time but said they felt he deserved more.
“I just think that he was just unhinged and I'm just glad that he's off the streets,” one of the teens' mothers said.
The mother of the older boy attacked by Walters said there needs to be larger accountability within the police force.
"Dempsey rounded up his posse and acted like a gang," the woman said after the hearing. "There were several officers that were there and they allowed all that to go down."
There are also larger questions about what happened that night.
The victims’ attorneys said last year that after punching the teen, the boy and his friends were placed in police SUVs and driven to a partially secluded parking lot where Walters and about 10 other officers gathered.
The officers remained in Angerstein's Building Supply parking lot for about 30 minutes, attorneys said. It wasn’t until one of the boys’ fathers approached officers and told them to release his son or he was going to block them in the lot that the boys were released.
The Delaware State Police have not spoken about any larger accountability measures stemming from the incident.
They said an internal review “identified policy violations” involving other officers but did not specify what those entailed or how they were handled within the department. Delaware law allows them to keep that secret.
The family intends to file a civil lawsuit in the coming year.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com .
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Former Delaware State Police officer sentenced to prison for assault on teens
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