Stalker sentenced for threatening detective

A man was sentenced to five years and four months in prison Friday for stalking a Huntington Beach police detective and attempting to make criminal threats against him.

Brian Dopler, 28, was convicted of two felony counts for attempted criminal threats and stalking Det. Gary Kim, who investigated three cases involving Dopler, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

He was found guilty by a jury June 2, at which time he was also on probation for domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend, prosecutors said.

Kim investigated Dopler for stalking and violating a protective order against the ex-girlfriend. Following the investigation, three protective orders were issued against Dopler, according to prosecutors. He was sentenced to 300 days in jail and placed on three years of informal probation.

Dopler, a Huntington Beach resident, left Kim 14 harassing phone messages within a month, used expletives and told him he was driving by his ex-girlfriend's home at the time he was leaving the messages, according to prosecutors.

Dopler's message to Kim on Feb. 10, 2010, promised to kill him or anyone else from the Police Department if they interfered with him, prosecutors said.

"Two things that made him stand out from other stalking suspects were his complete obsession with his ex-girlfriend and myself, and the fact that he always told me the truth," Kim told the court during an impact statement.

"I realized later Mr. Dopler does so because he simply believed what he was doing, the fear he was imposing on the victim, was not wrong," Kim said.