School Police Chief Charged With Theft

Investigators: Money missing from drug forfeiture funds, local NAACP

By Staff Reports
The Tube City Almanac
September 05, 2024
Posted in: Crime and Police News

BREAKING: This is a developing story and is subject to change.

(Tube City Almanac file photo)

McKeesport Area School District’s police chief has been charged with theft, forgery and other offenses related to the misuse of money from her former job at the state Attorney General’s office.

Westmoreland County investigators also allege that Brenda D. Sawyer, 61, of North Versailles Twp. misappropriated money from the community violence fund of the McKeesport unit of the NAACP, which she served as president.

The money was used to cover gambling debts at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh and the Hollywood Casino at The Meadows in Washington County, a criminal complaint alleges.

Sawyer was arraigned Thursday evening at a district magistrate’s office on charges of theft by unlawful taking, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, forgery and dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities.

She was being held Thursday night in Westmoreland County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bond pending a preliminary hearing Sept. 13 before Magisterial District Judge Henry Lee Moore in North Huntingdon Twp.

Charges were filed by Westmoreland County detectives attached to the district attorney’s office.

“This was an investigation that kept unraveling the more our detectives probed,” Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli said in a prepared release. “No one is above the law, and we will hold those accountable who feel emboldened to abuse their power and position of trust.”

Sawyer was named McKeesport Area School District police chief in October 2023. Outside of her professional work, she has been well-known as a community volunteer who led and advocated for community violence prevention programs.

Sawyer previously served as regional director of the state Attorney General’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation & Drug Control at an office located in North Huntingdon Twp.

The Westmoreland County investigation reportedly began after $100,000 in money was reported missing from that office during Sawyer’s tenure.

Detectives allege that in some cases, while Sawyer was in charge of the office, narcotics investigators were denied funds for undercover drug investigations.

In the criminal complaint, detectives accuse Sawyer of rejecting those requests because, they allege, she had withdrawn money from state accounts for her personal use, and those accounts were in danger of being overdrawn.

In May, Pittsburgh’s WPXI-TV reported that state police and other law enforcement officials had obtained a warrant to search the home of a former attorney general’s office employee in North Versailles. The station did not identify Sawyer.

The criminal complaint filed Thursday in Westmoreland County confirms that the home searched in May was that of Sawyer.

According to a criminal complaint, following Sawyer’s retirement from the state Attorney General’s office, her replacement, Special Agent Michael Kanuch, became aware that $26,000 was missing from a fund used to pay confidential informants during narcotics investigations.

The complaint states that $26,000 was an unusually large amount of money to be kept in the local office. When Kanuch asked Sawyer about the money, according to the complaint, she told him that it had been “lost or misplaced” and she promised to replace the funds with two post-dated checks.

Kanuch notified state auditors of the discrepancy, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, during interviews with Westmoreland County detectives in May 2024, Sawyer said she began keeping cash on hand in the North Huntingdon office during the COVID pandemic, when banks were closed, in case agents needed money for drug buys.

She further stated that the money may have been misplaced when she cleaned out her North Huntingdon office following her retirement, or that it may have accidentally been shredded with old case files, the affidavit states.

However, additional investigation revealed that another $75,778 was missing from money that had been seized as evidence during drug investigations, according to the complaint. The money had been kept in a safe-deposit box to which Sawyer had access, the affidavit states.

The complaint states that during a subsequent review of the office’s records, county detectives learned that beginning in January 2019, Sawyer had started issuing checks to herself, supposedly for use in purchasing narcotics during drug investigations.

Detectives allege that Sawyer wrote 58 checks totalling nearly $46,000 from two separate state-run accounts, according to the affidavit.

Kanuch told investigators that Sawyer was not actively working narcotics cases that would have required her to have those sums of money.

Subsequent investigation by Westmoreland County officials revealed that although Sawyer’s salary with the state Attorney General’s office was $130,000 annually, she reported $651,367 in taxable income in 2023, as well as $435,227 in gambling losses, according to the criminal complaint.

The affidavit states that the investigation widened when detectives discovered that Sawyer had opened an account for the McKeesport NAACP Community Violence Fund at PNC Bank, registered to her home address in North Versailles.

Investigators interviewed another member of the McKeesport NAACP and determined that although the organization was aware of the community violence prevention program, they were unaware that a separate bank account had been opened.

According to the complaint, further investigation determined that the signature of the NAACP’s treasurer had been forged on paperwork at PNC Bank.

Westmoreland County detectives allege that between January 2019 and April 2024, Sawyer diverted more than $52,650 from the McKeesport unit of the NAACP, including $10,369 from the community violence fund.

In many cases, according to the complaint, the money was withdrawn directly from NAACP accounts at cash machines at the Rivers Casino. Those withdrawals coincided with transactions made on Sawyer’s account with the Rivers Casino, investigators allege.

At a board meeting Thursday night, McKeesport Area School District officials said that Sawyer was placed on a leave of absence earlier in the day, when they learned of the criminal charges.

This is a developing story and is subject to change.

Originally published September 05, 2024.

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