Former Northwest Territories RCMP sergeant Larry O'Brien was sentenced on Wednesday to six months in jail, after he admitted to stealing $2,000 from a police evidence locker and trying to cover up the theft with falsified bank documents.

O'Brien, 46, received a six-month jail sentence for breach of trust, along with a three-month concurrent sentence for uttering forged documents.

The 21-year RCMP veteran and former media spokesman had also been charged in June 2010 with theft under $5,000 and uttering threats, but the Crown dropped those charges after O'Brien pleaded guilty in territorial court on Tuesday.

Alberta provincial court Judge J. Richard McIntosh, who was brought to Yellowknife to hear the case, said he initially felt O'Brien's breach of trust warranted a 12-month sentence.

But McIntosh said he recognized that convicted police officers have a more difficult time in jail than other inmates — in many cases, they serve their time in segregation — so he reduced the sentence to six months.

After the sentence was handed down, O'Brien's wife was allowed into the courthouse holding cell to say a private goodbye to him before he was led away in handcuffs.

Bank documents doctored

O'Brien admitted that he stole $2,000 from an evidence locker at the Yellowknife RCMP detachment in late 2008. The money had been seized from an N.W.T.-Nunavut drug bust.

He secretly returned the cash to the evidence locker a day after police noticed the money was missing, but the $20 bills he used were brand new, court heard on Tuesday.

O'Brien refused to take a polygraph test, and he presented investigators with doctored bank documents to avoid getting caught.

But the documents his bank turned over to police showed that O'Brien withdrew $2,000 from his account around the time that the money was brought back to the evidence locker, court heard.

McIntosh said O'Brien's actions cast a shadow on other RCMP officers who had keys to the evidence locker, since they all had to undergo polygraph tests and have their personal financial records examined.

Used marijuana, cocaine

Court was told that O'Brien struggled with inner demons for years and consumed marijuana and cocaine before and after he joined the police force.

O'Brien claims he had been sexually molested as a teenager by a family friend who was also a parish priest. His lawyer, Caroline Wawzonek, told the court that her client never came to terms with the abuse and instead used drugs to cope.

Court heard that O'Brien's world began deteriorating after a close friend, Const. Christopher Worden, was killed in the line of duty in Hay River, N.W.T., in October 2007.

While O'Brien was close to the slain officer, he was also the N.W.T. RCMP's spokesman at the time. O'Brien was often seen speaking to reporters about the police investigation into Worden's death.

McIntosh said while he has no doubt that O'Brien was under psychological stress, O'Brien made little effort to deal with the past abuse and the impacts of Worden's death.

The judge added that an email O'Brien sent in June 2010, threatening bodily harm against six senior RCMP members, showed a very different side of the former Mountie than the sympathetic image Wawzonek presented in court.

With files from the CBC's Richard Gleeson