(News analysis) A controversy shoves New Haven’s police chief out of a job. How does the mayor look to move the city forward: With a change agent? Or a next-in-line successor to keep the department on its current course? New Haven mayors have faced that choice at least five times in the past f ive decades — sometimes making the former decision, sometimes the latter. The choice has tended to reflect how much, or little, the controversies have revealed larger problems in the police department. Mayor Justin Elicker opted for continuity this week. He nominated Acting Chief David Zannelli to succeed Chief Karl Jacobson, who retired after disclosures that he allegedly stole $85,000 while racking up $200,000 in debts after placing $4.4 million in phone bets over the course of a year. Elicker chose to stick with someone who worked his way up through the department from walking beat to investigator to Fair Haven district manager to internal affairs chief to supervisor of detectives and of patrol. Former Mayor John DeStefano did the same in 1997 when a personal scandal pushed Chief Nicholas Pastore out of the job. Pastore was discovered to have fathered a child with a sex worker and didn’t take responsibility for the act until the state intervened. (He ended up raising the daughter.) DeStefano immediately chose Pastore’s top deputy, Melvin Wearing, to become chief and continue Pastore’s community-policing policies. DeStefano did the opposite 10 years later after a 2007 FBI raid led to arrests of high-ranking cops and the discovery of widespread corruption. That raid led to the departure of then-Chief Francisco Ortiz, who was not personally involved in the scandal but had been chief at the time the misconduct occurred. DeStefano conducted a national search and brought in a retired chief from out of state, James Lewis, to overhaul the department’s policies and name new top assistants. “When the departure occurs because the nature of policing has lost its legitimacy in the city, you go outside. But when it’s occurred for a personal reason and generally policing is viewed as solid, you look for continuity,” DeStefano reflected Wednesday. He said it therefore makes sense that Elicker elevated Zannelli given that in general “people feel solid” about city policing and Zannelli is a “strong candidate” who has proved himself with the community as Fair Haven’s district manager. Mayor Toni Harp too chose continuity when personality issues drove Police Chief Dean Esserman from his post in 2016. Harp on Wednesday said those issues had “little to do” with Esserman’s overall commitment to community-based policing (a policy she originally co-authored when it came to New Haven in 1990). Harp did conduct a search that drew 24 applicants to succeed Esserman. Harp decided the next assistant chief in line, Anthony Campbell, “was really smart” and “committed as a human being” to community policing. Like David Zannelli, Campbell had risen through the NHPD ranks and served as interim chief before the mayor nominated him for the permanent post. Citywide politics, along with citywide political debates, always have helped determine how mayors choose new chiefs in the wake of controversies: • In 1977 then-Chief Biagio DiLieto lost his job in the wake of an internal investigation that revealed that he had approved illegal wiretaps of citizens as part of an eavesdropping operation that ensanared thousands of New Haveners. The mayor at the time, Frank Logue, had come to office as part of a reform slate that overthrew a political machine. DiLieto subsequently ran for mayor twice and in 1979 ousted Logue from office as part of a continuing political feud. (One irony here: It turns out DiLieto only reluctantly approved one set of wiretaps after a department faction allied with Logue had launched and operated the illegal wiretapping operation for decades.) • In 1990, another anti-political machine reform campaign elected John Daniels took office after running for mayor on a platform calling for police reform. Daniels brought in Pastore, who had retired from the department, to return as chief. Pastore swept top cops out of office and initiated a dramatic new community-policing approach downplaying arrests and punishing police misconduct. Communitiy outrage over violent policing under Pastore’s predecessor (including a “beat-down posse” of officers who randomly popped out of a van at streetcorner to rough up young black men) helped elect Daniels. Given New Haven’s political and policing climate in 2026, it makes sense that New Haven’s mayor looked inside the department and opted for continuity in this case, observed city police commission member Michael Lawlor. Lawlor has watched departments wrestle with change as the legistlature’s former top criminal justice-focused lawmaker, top criminal-justice policy aide to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and current member of the state Police Officer Standards and Training Council. For starters, Connecticut communities have trouble finding new chiefs in national searches, Lawlor observes: Assistant chiefs often make more money in other states than Connecticut chiefs make. He pointed as well to a recent messy failed attempt by Hartford to find a new chief out of state. Meanwhile, Jacobson’s scandal stemmed purely from Jacobson’s personal gambling habit and subsequent theft of money to pay debts, not a deeper problem within the deparment or public clamor for a change in direction, Lawlor observed.  “Karl had an Achilles’ heel, obviously. As police chiefs go, he was otherwise doing a phenomenal job. Karl was good at getting the trust of the community. Zannelli is good at it,” Lawlor said. Meanwhile, he has noticed a trend in interviewing prospective new cops as a New Haven commissioner: The kind of “people you want to be cops,” people with a commitment to community policing say they specifically chose to apply to New Haven because of how the department operates. Lawlor said one particularly promising recruit from northwest Connecticut told the commissioners he had surveyed departments throughout the state. “He said, ‘I’ve only applied to New Haven. This is where I want to work.” Another change has offered an argument for continuity, Lawlor said: A new police contract has raised pay enough that for the first time he’s seeing officers seek to transfer to New Haven from other departments rather than the other way around. One test of Elicker’s choice of a new chief will be how those trends stand a year or two from now. The post With Scandal Isolated, Mayor Chose Continuity appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less