‘Not above the law’: Delaware cop’s alleged sexual misconduct with 2 women revealed in court records that left his chief ‘speechless’

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Content warning: This story includes the topic of unlawful sexual contact.                

An employee at a store in a tiny, rural Delaware town was telling a police officer about a shoplifting incident there when, according to court records, he suddenly began making sexual comments toward her.

He allegedly told her he wanted to touch her breasts. She told him not to do it, but she said he put his hand under her shirt and bra and groped her anyway.

She was scared, but the man was wearing a badge and his police uniform, so she didn’t scream, she later told another police officer. She just shut down.

Then the officer told her to take him down the aisle where the shoplifting occurred. But on the way, seeing there were no cameras, the officer allegedly put his arms around her waist. This time she pulled away, court records state.

The officer also offered to give her a ride home, but she drove herself. After she got home, however, she and a relative allegedly watched a patrol car with the same cop inside drive by several times, once with the lights off, and park nearby.

Those incidents, which transpired over a few hours on the night of Jan. 7 in the western Sussex County town of Delmar, led to the arrest of 26-year-old Delmar police officer Darrell T. Powell Jr. last week.

Powell’s alleged crimes in the store and outside the woman’s home were detailed in Delaware court records obtained by WHYY News with an open records request. Those documents also describe a second, eerily similar set of alleged crimes at another Delmar store committed by Powell, a nearly four-year veteran of the town’s police force.

The allegations against Powell had only been briefly described by the Attorney General’s Office in a news release this week. WHYY News is not naming the stores or the nature of their businesses to protect the identities of the alleged victims.

The second series of incidents began, police said, when Powell took a liking to a woman at another store where he investigated a shoplifting report in July. He visited her regularly while on duty, telling the woman she was “eye candy” and making inappropriate remarks about her body, court records show.

Powell even pulled her car over once but didn’t ask for her license and registration, saying instead he “just wanted to see what she would do” if he stopped her, court records show.

Then on Feb. 24, according to court records, he also physically violated the second woman.

That day Powell walked into her store, wearing his uniform and carrying his police-issued firearm. The woman was on a ladder in a back room when he rubbed her buttocks with his hand, court records state.

She told him to stop, but a few minutes later, while she was in the store, he grabbed her again in a sexual manner, and she pulled away, police said.

Powell was taken into custody last week and is being held on $27,500 cash bail at Sussex Correctional Institution on two counts each of felony official misconduct and misdemeanor third-degree sexual contact, as well as one count each of felony stalking and offensive touching, a misdemeanor.

Women didn’t initially report Powell’s alleged behavior

Neither woman initially reported their encounters with Powell to police. But on Feb. 26, according to Delmar Police Chief Ivan Barkley, a security officer from the store where he allegedly violated the woman in January contacted town police.

Barkley said he immediately suspended Powell — whose annual salary is $63,700 — without pay, then reached out to the Attorney General’s Office for guidance. Prosecutors urged him to ask another police agency to investigate Powell, Barkley said, so he reached out to the force in nearby Seaford, which agreed to conduct the probe.

“We take it very seriously,” said Barkley, whose officers serve approximately 2,400 residents in Delaware and some 4,000 across the state line in the separate municipality of Delmar, Maryland.

“This is a small town, and we care a lot about our citizens and the image that the police department portrays out here. That’s why we took the actions that we did, immediately jumping on it, getting him out of circulation and getting this thing moving, getting it taken care of,” Barkley said.

Barkley told WHYY News this week that even after Powell’s arrest, he only knew the bare bones of the “troubling” allegations. So a reporter sent him the three-page probable cause affidavit that detailed the full scope of Powell’s alleged crimes.

After reading the narrative by the Seaford detective, Barkley said, simply, “I’m speechless.”

Powell allegedly told friend about groping one woman

The Seaford detective went to the store where the Jan. 7 incidents occurred and viewed video surveillance from the office where Powell met with the woman.

The footage showed that at 10:34 p.m., Powell held his hand for several seconds on his body-worn camera, then put his hand down the woman’s shirt. The woman made “movements to move away” from Powell, the detective wrote.

Footage from Powell’s body-worn camera shows that he turned it off at 10:34 p.m. after it had been activated for 19 minutes at the store. A store manager also told the detective that other surveillance footage showed Powell and the woman entering an aisle where no camera was located.

While that investigation was proceeding, Delmar police learned that Powell might have confided details of his behavior to a friend on Feb. 25. The Seaford detective, suspecting the information might be about the alleged groping in January, interviewed the friend.

Instead, the friend told the detective about the second series of incidents after Powell had told him the information might leave him “disappointed” in Powell.

Powell told his friend he’d groped the woman at the second store, at first accidentally, but then intentionally, according to court records.

At the store, the woman said the groping occurred on Feb. 24. She also detailed her previous encounters with him, including his unofficial visits to the store “to hang out while on duty” and the strange traffic stop about a month after he interviewed her in July.

The detective found that on July 18, Powell had documented a visit to the store to investigate a shoplifting.

In addition, on Aug. 12 Powell had used an FBI database to search for the woman’s car registration information.

That was enough for the Seaford detective, who sought and obtained an arrest warrant for Powell on March 16. Powell was arrested two days later and appeared before a magistrate, who ordered him held on bail and stipulated that he have no contact with either of the alleged victims.

Powell is due in the Sussex County Court of Common Pleas on Friday for a preliminary hearing. If the judge moves the case to Superior Court, dates for pretrial hearings and a trial will soon be scheduled.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings, whose Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust is prosecuting the case, would not agree to be interviewed but issued a statement on Powell’s alleged crimes and the courage of the alleged victims.

“No one, regardless of their profession, is above the law — and my office will adhere to that standard as we move forward,” her statement read. “I want to express my profound gratitude to the victims for their courage in reaching out to law enforcement.”

Jennings also urged anyone with information about inappropriate conduct by Powell to contact special investigator Timothy Argoe in her office at 302-257-3294. A photo of Powell in uniform can be viewed here.

Meanwhile, down in Delmar, Chief Barkley wants residents on both sides of the border to know his only concern is their well-being.

“I don’t care who you are or what you do,” Barkley said. “You’re not above the law. We’re going to do what we have to do to keep our community safe.”

Resources for victims, witnesses and family members:

• If you or someone you know is a victim of or witness to a crime of sexual violence in Delaware and are in crisis, call YWCA Delaware’s 24/7 hotline at 1-800-773-8570.
• Those outside of Delaware can call RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline 24/7 at 1-800-656-4673 or text “HOPE” to 64673, or use the online chat at rainn.org.
• Delaware State Police’s Victim Services Section provides resources and support for victims and families and can be reached at 1-800-842-8461.
• Other Delaware resources for those seeking assistance can be found online through state and local agencies.