— by Eric Francis

HARTFORD VT 6/8/23 - A former corrections officer and her long-time boyfriend were busted on drug and weapons charges Wednesday morning in an apartment house on Hartford Avenue that sits near the entrance to the Hartford middle and high schools.

An investigation dubbed “Operation Hurricane Alley,” in an apparent nod to the nearby campus, had been going on for a month, according to the Hartford Police Department, which was joined on the scene by officers from the neighboring Lebanon and Norwich police departments and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

An apartment rented by James Ingerson, 52, and Leanne Salls, 40, was the focus of a search warrant.

Ingerson was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and with being a felon in possession of a firearm, which appeared to be the reason for the inclusion of the ATF in the raid.  He was booked on the new charges and then turned over to Probation and Parole officers who put him back in jail for the alleged parole violation.

Salls was charged with possession of cocaine before being released with a citation to appear for arraignment on the charge later this summer.

Photo released by Hartford police of the results of their search of the couple’s apartment.

Just minutes before the search warrant was executed on Hartford Avenue, several Hartford police officers and a federal ATF agent briefly detained the driver of a small blue car with New Hampshire plates on Prospect Street in White River Junction.

The driver of the car loudly insisted that he had no idea what was going on and that he had “only given a guy a ride” as the agent pressed him for permission to search his vehicle. The driver, who insisted he was not involved in any illegal activity, eventually consented to having his car searched at Hartford’s police station. He was released from handcuffs so that he could drive his car up there himself.

Salls and Ingerson were involved in an illicit relationship a decade ago that made headlines across Vermont at the time. Salls lost her job as corrections officer and was charged with misconduct with an inmate after Corrections Department officials learned that she had become pregnant with Ingerson’s child while he was under her supervision at Southeast State Correctional Facility in Springfield in 2011.  She eventually pleaded guilty to the charge in the fall of 2013 in exchange for a deferred sentence.

Former prison guard Leanne Salls, seen here in a 2013 file photo, when she was given a deferred sentence in a case that came about after the Correction's Department learned that an inmate had fathered her child. Eric Francis photo.