New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker says he cannot confirm the total amount missing from funds meant to compensate police informants, until a state investigation into theft allegations against the city’s former police chief is complete.
Elicker says Chief Karl Jacobson retired, effective immediately, on Monday after assistant chiefs confronted Jacobson about irregularities in the informant account. Jacobson says he took $10,000, according to city officials. Jacobson did not immediately respond to Connecticut Public’s requests for comment.
The state’s attorney’s office asked that Jacobson’s office be sealed pending the investigation. Meanwhile, the department has been unable to confirm whether the required financial audits had been happening since Chief Jacobson took over in 2022.
“We are looking into this, and clearly, this result is something that is not desirable at all. And we want to make sure it never happens again,” Elicker said.
Acting police chief David Zannelli, who helped raise the attention to the discrepancies in funds, says the informant account was under only Jacobson’s control.
“What the chief had done is basically make it where he would be the sole holder of the money,” Zannelli said. “What he would say to us is, commonly, that he was doing that to protect us from any kind of liability.”
There is no evidence of others involvement at this time, according to Elicker.
“[Zannelli] has strong integrity, and I remind folks he and the two other assistant chiefs came forward under what I think any of us would imagine is a pretty difficult situation,” Elicker said. “There's someone that was their mentor that promoted them into this position, these positions, because they wanted to do the right thing.”
The state’s attorney’s office has announced Christian Watson from the Judicial District of New Britain will be leading the state police investigation. Elicker says that’s to avoid any potential conflicts of interest locally.
