‘Torture of our clients’: Lawsuit targets ex-Delaware trooper, other cops, for violent response to ‘ding, dong, ditch’ prank by teens

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The violent reaction by a Delaware state trooper to a teenage doorknock prank at his home in 2023 has already ended his career and landed him behind bars for breaking a 15-year-old’s eye socket and other crimes.

Now, that youngster’s guardian and two of his friends, who are now adults, are suing former trooper Dempsey Walters, state police, and other officers and local forces involved in the armed response that Walters initiated.

The victims allege that they were subjected not only to assault and battery, but also to cruel and unusual punishment, false imprisonment and discrimination. The victim, who was 15, is Latino, and his two friends are Black. Walters is white. They were identified by pseudonyms in the lawsuit to protect their identity.

The lawsuit, filed this week in Superior Court, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. The lawsuit also aims to identify and hold accountable other officers from the New Castle County, Elsmere, and Newport forces who participated in the chase, apprehension and detention of the teens in the trooper’s neighborhood near Elsmere.

The victims’ attorney, Chris Johnson, said that others besides Walters and fellow state troopers who have previously been identified are also culpable.

“We also had other officers, some we know of and some we don’t even know their names yet, who may have acted and/or aided and abetted the torture of our clients,” Johnson told WHYY News on Wednesday. “We applaud the Attorney General’s Office for taking swift action there, but there were also other officers there. We haven’t had access to all the hours of [policy body camera] footage that day.”

State police said they had no response to the lawsuit because it’s “an active legal matter,’’ Lt. India Sturgis said.

Walters pleaded guilty in October to two felonies — deprivation of civil rights and second-degree assault — and four misdemeanors — two counts each of third-degree assault and official misconduct. A judge sentenced him to one year in prison but with good time factored in, he has already been released from prison and is serving four years of probation.

Jennings spoke about her horror at viewing the footage of the incident when Walters pleaded guilty.

“The defendant chose to extract his own form of personal justice by embarking on a violent assault,” Jennings said. “No one is above the law or beneath justice.”

Trooper Walters punched the handcuffed teen in the face

The lawsuit recounts what happened early in the evening of August 21, after a 15-year-old kid kicked the door of Walters’ home while playing “ding, dong, ditch,’’ a prank where someone rings a home’s doorbell, knocks or hits the door, and runs away before someone comes to the door.

Walters, a five-year state police veteran, was on duty and not home. But his live-in girlfriend reviewed the Ring doorbell camera footage and called him to report the incident.

Walters drove there and contacted state police and the other local agencies about a fabricated home invasion, the lawsuit said.

According to the indictment of Walters, which a New Castle County grand jury handed down in September 2023, he and other officers knocked on the door of one teen’s home, “forcibly” pulled him outside, and “forced him onto the ground,’’ causing unspecified injuries.

Walters handcuffed and detained him in the back of a police vehicle. The teen was later released without being charged.

Walters began heading home, but another trooper reported that he’d found the 15-year-old teen who kicked the door and two friends. When Walters arrived at the scene, the 15-year-old was “face down on the ground’’ as the other trooper “struggled’’ to handcuff him behind his back, the indictment said.

Instead of observing, however, Walters “almost immediately’’ struck the teen “in the back of the neck/head with his knee,’’ the indictment said.

The teen was eventually handcuffed, and put in another trooper’s cruiser. While that was occurring, Walters “turned off his body-worn camera,’’ walked to the vehicle, and punched the handcuffed teen “in the right side of his face, causing an orbital fracture,’’ the indictment said. The orbital bone is commonly referred to as the eye socket.

Then, Walters walked around the vehicle and turned his camera back on. But the punch had already been documented on video because the camera continued recording, with the youth screaming in pain afterward, the indictment said.

The third teen was detained in a police vehicle for more than two hours before being released without being charged with any crime, the lawsuit said.

State police reviewed the body camera footage almost immediately, and the next day notified the Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust in the office of Attorney General Kathy Jennings.

Dempsey was immediately suspended, and a month later, he was indicted.

Johnson said the lawsuit seeks to punish the cops and their agencies for harming children who were just engaged in harmless fun at the end of their summer vacation, especially the 15-year-old.

“He has both long-lasting permanent injuries, but also has had difficulty in school and has had to give up the sport that he loves playing, which is baseball. He can no longer play for his high school team.”

The victims “continue to struggle to this day. They’ve tried to move on, but unfortunately the traumatic effects of this occurrence nearly two years ago is still plaguing them.”