(Updated) New Haven said it had solved its problem with cops dipping into cash meant for confidential informants for their own personal use. Then came Monday’s announcement that New Haven’s police chief abruptly retired after getting caught doing exactly that. So much for the fix. Now officials are tasked with explaining to the public: How did this happen yet again? Who was or wasn’t watching the money? And how will they try to fix the problem again? And why did the mayor appoint as his new acting police chief the assistant chief who — according to the department’s written guidelines — was responsible for managing the stolen cash? Initial answers out of City Hall and 1 Union Ave. are scarce as investigators begin looking into the scandal. Chief Karl Jacobson resigned and filed for retirement Monday after a high-ranking cop, Criminal Intelligence Unit boss Lt. Derek Werner, discovered that money was missing from the department’s confidential information (CI) fund. Werner conveyed that discovery to assistant chiefs, who confronted Jacobson, who reportedly fessed up and stepped down. Mayor Justin Elicker then named Asst. Chief David Zannelli — who had sole authority under the department’s general orders to manage the CI money — to serve as acting chief. On Tuesday the chief state’s attorney’s office and state police announced the launch of an investigation into Jacobson’s alleged “misuse of public funds.” In order to avoid a conflict of interest, the New Britain state’s attorney will conduct the investigation rather than New Haven’s, since the New Haven state’s attorney’s office works closely with New Haven police on criminal cases on a daily basis. Also on Tuesday, mayoral spokesman Lenny Speiller said that the police Narcotics Enforcement Account, which included confidential information money, currently has $50,766.09 in it. The city has frozen the account and “is currently reviewing the recent distributions.” The Independent asked Speiller why the mayor named Zannelli to run the department when he had been responsible for managing the stolen money. “Part of the investigation is that proper procedures and protocols were not followed,” Speiller said. (Updated) After this article was published, Zannelli contacted the Independent to state that neither he nor his predecessor in his role ever had control of the CI files or money. He said Jacobson controlled them since 2019, before he became chief in 2022, when Jacobson oversaw narcotics investigations; and then maintained control when he became chief. (More on that later in this article.) The mayor stated Monday that there’s no reason to believe that anyone other than Jacobson stole money. Jacobson’s alleged theft had a familiar echo at 1 Union Ave. In 2008 a detective named Clarence Willoughby was arrested for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of CI dollars. (A jury later found him not guilty.) Willoughby’s trial painted a picture of a system where detectives could take out money as though through an ATM, with little oversight. Separately, in 2007, the FBI raided police headquarters to build a case against the late Det. Billy White and a team he oversaw at the department for, among other offenses, misusing CI money without documentation. A reckoning followed. With the help of a national group called the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), New Haven police crafted a policy for handling confidential funds. That 2008 policy (read it here) created safeguards that would in theory prevent an occurrence like the one that led to Jacobson’s tragic career-ending episode. Under the policy, the “assistant chief of investigations” — the assistant chief who oversees criminal investigations, including narcotics — would be responsible for approving payments to confidential informants, handling and paying out the cash, keeping records. Retired Acting Chief John Velleca, who at the time ran the narcotics division, wrote that policy with PERF’s help. He described in an interview Tuesday how the policy was carried out in practice: He said that the assistant chief of investigations and top supervisor of criminal intelligence are the only ones who handled cash from the desktop safe in the assistant chief’s second-floor office. He said they had a policy of capping at $1,500 the amount of cash allowed in the safe at any one time. “There was no system” in place before that 2008 policy took effect, Velleca recalled. “There was no paperwork for the CI money. [Then-detective bureau chief Brian Sullivan] had a stack of money. You went in his office and he gave you money.” The Billy White case he also participated in investigating revealed cops “taking $160 and paying people $70” while pocketing the rest. “No witnesses. No paperwork.” Needless to say, the policy also states: “Department funds will not be used for personal use, nor will they be mixed with personal funds.” Which is what Jacobson admitted to doing, according to Mayor Justin Elicker. The current head of criminal intelligence, one of the two people responsible for handling CIs, is Lt. Werner, who discovered and reported the missing money. Werner rose through the ranks of NHPD as a second career after a career as a Marine. David Zannelli, whom Mayor  Elicker Monday appointed as acting chief, was the assistant chief overseeing Werner’s work. So he was the other police official responsible for handling CI records and payouts. (Zannelli previously served as the assistant chief in charge of patrol. He has served as the assistant chief of investigations since January 2025, when he swapped roles with fellow Assistant Chief Bertram Ettienne. Jacobson’s third assistant chief, Manmeet Bhagtana, is the assistant chief of administration.) The most recent version of the general order for managing confidential informants, posted on the city website, states: “At all times, files shall be in a secure location accessible to only the Assistant Chief of Investigations and the Chief of Police or his/her designee.” The order clearly identifies “the assistant chief of investigations” — and only that person — as responsible for managing, approving and keeping records of all payments. That updated version was signed in 2016 by then-Chief Dean Esserman. Before becoming chief, Jacobson had been responsible for confidential funds as assistant chief. Jacobson could not be reached for comment for this story. In the conversation Monday night with the Independent, Zannelli said he and Ettienne, who previously served as assistant chief of investigations, repeatedly asked Jacobson about control of the CI files and funds. He said Jacobson responded that they needed training first. He said Jacobson promised to arrange for that training, but the training never happened. Zannelli said in the last year the chiefs were focused on addressing violent crime. He also pointed out the general order does allow the chief access to CI files. But the order does not allow the chief access to CI dollars. And it does require the assistant chief to monitor and report on the spending of the money. Mayor Elicker Monday said the city will not provide answers to crucial questions — how Jacobson allegedly stole the money, how much was stolen, who approved or didn’t approve payments, where the desktop safe of CI cash was stored — while the investigation takes its course. That means it will be a while until New Haven figures out not just how the police department continues to fail to safeguard its informant fund, but how it might figure out how to learn from the incident to come up with a more effective fix. A video recording of Monday’s presser. The post Informant $ Fix Failed In Chief’s Case appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less