Former District Police Officer Sentenced for Stealing More Than $175,000

A former D.C. police officer was sentenced yesterday to a year and a day in prison for stealing more than $175,000 from the District by falsely claiming she worked overtime to catch speeders, federal prosecutors said.

Karin Coppens, a 23-year member of the force, pleaded guilty in September to stealing from a program that receives federal funds. Coppens, 49, acknowledged that from 2004 to 2008, she filed 94 fake overtime sheets asserting that she had worked 3,400 hours for the department's photo radar program.

In fact, prosecutors said, she did no such work. Coppens, who worked at the department's training facility, forged supervisors' names on time sheets. She pocketed $178,611 before the thefts were discovered, prosecutors said.

"It's particularly troubling when anyone who is entrusted to enforce the law breaks the law," Assistant U.S. Attorney John W. Borchert said after the hearing. "It's certainly a substantial sum of money that came straight from the taxpayers and could have been used for a range of needs in our community."

As part of her plea deal, Coppens is supposed to make full restitution to the D.C. government.

Coppens's attorney, Harold D. Martin II, wrote in court papers that his client had an otherwise unblemished career. At the time of the thefts, she was "overwhelmed with the repayment of debt incurred through the care of her parents."

Coppens, who has resigned from the force, was also suffering from undiagnosed depression, he wrote.

"It is from this backdrop that this plot evolved," he wrote, "more from desperation and impaired judgment than greed."