Convicted Former Police Officer Found Guilty of Stalking Again • Iowa Capital Dispatch

Posted on by Vaseline

A jury in Polk County has found former police officer Walter Pacheco guilty of stalking his ex-girlfriend, court documents show.

Pacheco, 29, of Pleasant Hill, had a prior conviction for the same crime, but the criminal charge was upgraded to a misdemeanor due to the existence of a protective order prohibiting the two from having contact. It carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

A sentencing hearing has not yet been set. It is possible that a judge could extend his current sentence of nearly 21 years to include the latest conviction.

Reservation photo of Walter Pacheco. (Courtesy of Polk County Jail)

Pacheco — also known by the last name Pacheco Belen — is a former police officer in Carroll and Eagle Grove, who hired him despite a similar harassment allegation from a different woman. He was forced to resign from Carroll and was fired by Eagle Grove before moving to the Des Moines metro area. He applied for a job as an officer with the Des Moines Police Department, court records show.

But his law enforcement career was derailed by a pattern of violence and intimidation that surfaced in 2022, much of it tied to his most recent ex-girlfriend. Pacheco surrendered his police certification in July 2022 after being arrested over a period of months for multiple crimes and misdemeanors, including assault, burglary, criminal damage, false imprisonment, intimidation, robbery, stalking, theft, witness tampering and malicious wounding.

Pacheco pleaded guilty to four of the charges in early 2023 and received a 19-year suspended prison sentence and probation.

In August 2023, after Pacheco again violated a restraining order, a judge sentenced him to 24 days in jail and warned him that further violations could result in prison time.

Ultimately, it was an incident two months later that led to the imposition of the 19-year sentence, an additional sentence of almost 2 years for violating the protection order, and the threatened sentence of 10 years.

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On October 16, 2023, Pacheco was accused of confronting the woman at a fitness center in south Des Moines.

“The Planet Fitness staff saw that the victim was scared and attempted to assist her by having the victim stand behind the counter,” the complaint said. “The staff assisted the victim in exiting Planet Fitness so she could get to her car.”

Still, Pacheco continued to approach her vehicle and followed the woman in his vehicle to her home and when she left for work, court records show. The woman also saw Pacheco’s mother near the woman’s home.

Pacheco was wearing a tracking device at the time because of his probation, and the data from it corroborated the woman’s claims, court records show. She also videotaped Pacheco with her cellphone.

Prosecutors also accused Pacheco of sending 39 emails to the woman after the incident. As the trial progressed, they learned that Pacheco had attempted to call the woman from prison, often using other inmates’ accounts, all in an attempt to hide his identity.

He was sentenced in April to a maximum of 19 years in prison after repeatedly violating probation. In June, a judge ruled that Pacheco violated restraining orders four times with the jailhouse phone calls and added about two years to his sentence.

Last week, a jury found him guilty of felony stalking after a four-day trial, court records show. Pacheco did not testify.

He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. People who are incarcerated often serve less than half of their total possible sentence for good behavior, and they can go on probation even sooner.

Pacheco has been held in the Polk County Jail since his arrest in October 2023.

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