Former Detective Charged in Evidence Room Theft

DA alleges $260K went missing over four-year period

By Jason Togyer
The Tube City Almanac
March 12, 2025
Posted in: Crime and Police News

A former McKeesport police detective is accused of taking more than $260,000 from the department’s evidence room over a four-year period prior to his retirement.

Christopher A. Halaszynski, 54, of Haler Heights is charged by the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office with theft by unlawful taking and receiving stolen property. Charges were filed Wednesday with Magisterial District Judge Eugene Riazzi.

Investigators allege that money connected to 159 cases is missing, and accuse Halaszynski of using the cash to pay bills and personal expenses and finance vacation trips.

When detectives confronted Halaszynski, they said, he told them he had “nothing to show for everything I’ve (taken).”

Some of the cases affected date back to the early 2000s, according to a criminal complaint.

Halaszynski waived his right to a preliminary hearing Wednesday and is free on $50,000 bond pending formal arraignment April 29 in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

“It is extremely disheartening that a once-trusted supervisor within this police department was capable of violating his oath to protect and serve by participating in the activities that have been alleged,” McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko said. “No one is above the law.”

Halaszynski is the second former McKeesport police detective to face theft charges in recent months.

In September 2024, Joseph A. Osinski, 56, was charged by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office with diverting more than $1 million in dues and other funding from Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 91 to pay personal and business expenses.

Osinski’s trial is scheduled to begin tomorrow (March 13) before Common Pleas Court Judge Jill E. Rangos.

A spokeswoman for District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. said “at this time, to the best of our knowledge” there is no known connection between the Osinski case and the charges against Halaszynski.

According to a criminal complaint filed by the DA’s office, Halaszynski was one of only two people with keys to the department’s evidence rooms and had oversight of their contents.

Cherepko said that city police have modernized their evidence-handling procedures in response to the investigation.

“We have instituted an entirely new process with policies and procedures that will not only modernize our evidence logs, but will provide a system of checks, balances and safety measures recommended by experts in this field,” Cherepko said

However, the mayor added, “no matter what procedures we enact, we need to be able to trust every person in the chain of custody of our police department’s evidence.”

According to the complaint, Halaszynski told investigators that he began taking money from the evidence room following a divorce, when money became tight, then later allegedly used the money to finance vacation trips, and had intended to replace the money later.

“(I got) selfish and greedy, and it became easy,” investigators said he told them.

The criminal complaint states there are six locked evidence rooms used by the McKeesport police department to store items seized during criminal investigations.

Halaszynski, who held the rank of captain and served as chief of the detective bureau, had access and keys to all six rooms, the complaint states. He had been custodian of the evidence rooms since 2018.

Although other officers had access to temporary evidence lockers, the complaint states, only the chief of detectives and the police chief had access to the storage rooms.

According to the complaint, in September, as the allegations against Osinski were about to become public, then-McKeesport police Chief Mark Steele asked Halaszynski to meet with him and begin an audit of the evidence rooms.

Instead, the complaint states, Halaszynski called off sick. On Sept. 9, 2024 — three days after Osinski was charged — Halaszynski was found unconscious in a police vehicle in what investigators described as a suicide attempt, according to the complaint.

Halaszynski was taken to UPMC Presbyterian hospital, Oakland, where he recovered.

The complaint states that Steele contacted the district attorney’s office for assistance.

From October through December of 2024, according to the complaint, investigators from the district attorney’s office conducted what was described as a “shelf by shelf, box by box” search of the evidence rooms and logged every item they found.

The DA’s office then compared the evidence logs they compiled with police reports from 2022, 2023 and 2024, the complaint states.

In multiple cases, according to the complaint, investigators found evidence envelopes that were labeled as containing currency, but they had been torn open and the cash was missing “in whole or in part.”

At least two cases involved evidence seized during searches by the Allegheny County district attorney’s drug-enforcement task force. In one of those cases, according to the complaint, an insulated cooler bag containing narcotics and more than $40,000 in cash was seized.

Investigators accuse Halaszynski of taking cash from the bag over a period of time, and then discarding the bag, but leaving the narcotics in the evidence package.

Although the criminal complaint states that 159 cases were “compromised,” a spokeswoman for Zappala said the office could not comment on whether any arrests or upcoming trials were placed in jeopardy by Halaszynski’s actions, and also could not comment on whether any additional charges are forthcoming.

A message left for Halaszynski’s attorney, Ryan James of White Oak, was not immediately returned.

Originally published March 12, 2025.

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