A Huntington Beach man faces trial this morning for allegedly stalking a police detective who was investigating the defendant for stalking someone else.
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If convicted of the felony counts against him of stalking and making criminal threats, 27-year-old Brian Dopler could get up to three years and eight months in state prison. He was being held on $1 million bail awaiting today's opening statements, which are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.
Beginning in May 2009, a 15-year veteran at the Huntington Beach Police Department identified by prosecutors as Detective Kim investigated
three cases involving Dopler for stalking and violating a protective
order, for which he was later convicted and sentenced to 300 days in jail and three years of informal probation.
In
December 2009, Dopler is accused of calling Kim repeatedly to
inquire if any new cases were being brought against him.
Between Jan. 8 and Feb. 10 of this year, Dopler allegedly stalked the detective and left 14 harassing phone messages in which he supposedly used expletives and mentioned he had been following Kim.
On Feb.
10, Dopler is also alleged to have left Kim a phone message filled with racial slurs, expletives, a threats to kill
the detective or any other police officer who followed him.
It's unclear if these calls ended with “Have a nice day.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.