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Former Buena Vista Police Chief Richard Hartman received a two-year suspended sentence for misuse of public funds in a plea deal last week.
Hartman pled no contest in Buena Vista Circuit Court last Wednesday to an amended indictment of misuse of public assets, a class four felony. He was originally charged with embezzlement of public funds in relation to several personal purchases made with a city credit card between February of 2019 and May of 2022.
A trial had been scheduled for last Thursday in the case. Bobby Lilly, the commonwealth’s attorney for Giles County who was brought in as a special prosecutor for this case, read a summary of the evidence he would have presented at the trial for the court prior to the sentencing Wednesday.
That evidence would have shown that between Feb. 1, 2019, and May 2, 2022, Hartman made “several dozen transactions” that totaled more than $3,500 “that did not appear to be for legitimate police department purposes.”
The transaction amounts ranged from $10 to a few hundred dollars each, and many of them “appeared to be for the personal benefit of Richard Hartman and/or a business entity in which he held a significant financial interest.”
The transactions were largely made with a credit card issued by the city of Buena Vista to the police department, and were recorded in the department’s bookkeeping records in ways that “did not necessarily reflect the true nature of the expense.” The charge was amended from embezzlement to misuse of public assets, Lilly said, because “that code section most appropriately fits the unique facts of this case. None of these financial irregularities fit the stereotype of ‘missing money’ or ‘embezzlement.’” Judge Edward Stein sentenced Hartman to two years in prison, all of which was suspended, and two years of supervised probation. Prior to his indictment in January, Hartman had already made restitution of $2,800 and will pay an additional $718.83 in restitution as part of the plea agreement.
Lilly said that he hopes the conclusion of the case “restores faith in the officers that work for the [Buena Vista Police] Department.”
“This was a reflection on the administration of the department, not of the hard working officers in the department,” he said.
Prior to being sentenced, Hartman addressed the court, saying that the expenditures were “not an effort to steal” from the department or to “defraud citizens,” but rather an “ill-conceived attempt to fix a problem I saw coming.”
Lilly noted in his statement that Hartman had cooperated with the investigation and had “expressed his belief that the discrepancies could have been rectified in an upcoming budget cycle.”
Hartman was hired as the Buena Vista police chief in 2015, replacing Chief Darrell Slagle who retired in 2014. Prior to coming to Buena Vista, Hartman served in the Newport News police department for more than two decades, including a tenure as captain of the city’s north precinct. During his tenure in Buena Vista, he helped the department receive state accreditation in 2018.
