Ex-Hartford police chief pleads to drug charge

PAW PAW, Mich. (WOOD) — The former Hartford police chief, who stepped down after a raid of her department in 2022, has pleaded to drug charges.

Tressa Beltran pleaded guilty Thursday to two felonies: delivery or possession of a controlled substance and using a computer to commit a crime, a release from the Attorney General’s Office said.

Under the terms of a plea deal, the prosecutor is seeking a minimum sentence of two years to three years, four months. The maximum penalty for both counts is 20 years. Sentencing is scheduled for June 24.

She was required to surrender her state law enforcement license, “ensuring she can never be employed as a police officer in the State of Michigan again,” the release from the AG’s Office said.

Beltran had already resigned as chief of the Hartford Police Department in January 2023.

Search warrants show that in the summer of 2022, the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office got a tip that Beltran was stealing narcotics. So investigators left two marked bottles of hydrocodone in a drug disposal box at the police department. When they returned to collect the box’s contents, the documents said, they found that a number of pills from the marked bottles were gone. Investigators raided the department on June 30 , 2022. They said they found several prescription bottles and loose hydrocodone pills in Beltran’s purse and that she admitted she was stealing drugs from the disposal box and using them.

She was initially charged with nine criminal counts.

Beltran is now being sued by a man who said he gave her pain pills because she threatened to make his life a “living hell” if he didn’t. He was on parole at the time and said he was prescribed the the pills after a leg injury. The lawsuit claims Beltran violated his rights, and that the city failed to properly train, supervise and discipline her.

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