Clockwise, from left: David Nicholas Dempsey gives an interview in front of gallows erected outside of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Dempsey, indicated with red arrow, climbs over fellow rioters on Jan. 6 at the entryway to the U.S. Capitol’s lower west terrace tunnel before using a long pole to attack police. Dempsey is seen clinging to tunnel frame and using feet to stomp on police officer’s heads on Jan. 6 (Department of Justice).
California man David Dempsey, who used fellow rioters on Jan. 6 as “human scaffolding” in order to carry out ceaseless attacks on police defending the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday and reportedly flashed an “OK” hand sign — a gesture used to express hate among the white power movement according to the Anti-Defamation League — as he left court.
NBC reporter Ryan Reilly said on X that several witnesses observed Dempsey make the gesture Friday.
The sentenced was handed down in Washington, D.C., by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan.
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors sought 21 years for Dempsey and highlighted in a recent sentencing memorandum how he clawed his way through the mob by climbing atop his fellow rioters and using them “like human scaffolding” in order to thrust himself to the mouth of a crowded tunnel where he used his hands, feet, flagpoles, crutches, pepper spray, pieces of broken furniture and “anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons and stomped on police officers’ heads.
“Dempsey’s violence reached such extremes that, at one point, he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him,” prosecutors wrote in a 46-page sentencing memorandum entered Aug. 2.
According to The Associated Press, at his sentencing hearing on Friday, the former fast food restaurant employee and onetime construction worker addressed some of the officers he assaulted, saying: “You were performing your duties, and I responded with hostility and violence.”
The stiff sentence is among the very steepest to emerge in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Seditious conspirator and imprisoned former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years, as Law&Crime reported in September 2023.
“David Dempsey is political violence personified,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Brasher said in court Friday.
Dempsey’s defense attorney sought a sentence of six years and six months.
David Dempsey, indicated with red arrow, sprays two bursts of pepper spray into a line of officers at the lower west terrace of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (Justice Department).
Dempsey was arrested in California in August 2021 and an indictment was unveiled against him in September 2021. He was charged with felony obstruction of an official proceeding, felony assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon, felony obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, felony entering or remaining, disorderly and disruptive conduct and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, misdemeanor disorderly conduct in a Capitol building or grounds and act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or building.
He struck a plea deal with prosecutors in January and pleaded guilty to two assault with a dangerous weapon charges.
Court records show that on Jan. 6, Dempsey doused police with a torrent of pepper spray including one officer who, just moments before, had his face mask compromised by a different rioter. Dempsey attacked another police officer ferociously with a metal crutch. He cracked that officer’s protective shield and gas mask, forcing the officer to “collapse in a daze, his ears ringing.”
The blow by Dempsey also cut the officer’s head and caused a concussion.
Dempsey swung “pole-like weapons more than 20 times” and sprayed chemical agents on at least three distinct occasions. He hurled objects at police at least 10 times and was seen “stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them some five times. He attempted to steal a riot shield and police baton while at the Lower West Terrace tunnel and he did it all while screaming threats and insults, prosecutors say.
Dempsey’s criminal background, more specifically his history of political violence, also factored into Lamberth’s decision Friday.
The Van Nuys man had burglary charges and no contest or nolo contendere pleas from 2020 and 2021 including one nolo contendere plea to assault with a caustic chemical in Los Angeles.
In 2019 when a peaceful protest against then-President Donald Trump had formed at the Santa Monica Pier, Dempsey used bear spray on anti-Trump protesters at short range. Prosecutors said he also punched a demonstrator and hit him over the head with a skateboard.
At another political protest in 2020, he sprayed an individual with pepper spray while holding them to the ground. Dempsey also hit that person with a metal bat.
Many years earlier, in 2009 in Los Angeles, Dempsey pleaded no contest to second-degree burglary and was sentenced to 16 months. In 2012, he pleaded no contest to conspiracy and grand theft in Burbank and, in 2014, pleaded no contest to burglary charges again.
In 2017 Dempsey pleaded no contest after he broke into a Van Nuys cellphone store, stole property and then fled. When police stopped Dempsey in 2017, prosecutors say he pretended to cooperate before fleeing in his car at speeds of over 100 mph.
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