City Unveils Deep Dive Into Confidential-Informant Policy

by Thomas Breen

Police Chief David Zannelli and Assistant Chief Bertram Ettienne.

Conduct more audits. Be more transparent. Review policies more frequently. Prioritize officer “wellness.”

Those recommendations and many more are included in a 57-page report newly released by the Elicker administration about how to improve the New Haven Police Department’s management of its Confidential Informant Fund.

The city paid $87,000 to the independent Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) earlier this year to put together the report in the wake of the scandal around former Police Chief Karl Jacobson stealing from the CI fund.

That fund is the pot of NHPD money reserved for individuals who provide “useful and credible” information to help officers solve crimes. It’s also used by police to make undercover purchases of narcotics during investigations.

Click here to read PERF’s report.

The CI fund has been at the center of city attention all year, ever since Jacobson abruptly retired and was later arrested for stealing money from that fund to support a gambling addiction. Jacobson resigned on the same day that he was confronted by the city’s three assistant chiefs, including now-Chief David Zannelli, about his theft.

The state’s attorney’s office has determined that Jacobson stole a total of $178,000 from the CI fund dating back to 2019. Jacobson has entered a “no contest” plea to one count of first-degree larceny in his ongoing criminal case. His restitution and sentencing hearings are scheduled for January.

In the wake of the revelation of Jacobson’s theft, the police department put a six-week pause on the CI fund and adopted a temporary “special order” beefing up the program’s checks and balances. Those included monthly rather than annual audits, the securing of the fund’s cash reserves in a safe in a room with digital access control and video monitoring, and monthly instead of annual replenishments of the fund — as overseen and signed off on by the city’s chief administrative officer, a City Hall employee.

The Elicker administration also hired PERF to interview relevant city cops, monitor how the city operates the CI program, review best practices, and issue a report to inform the development of a new permanent CI general order.

Mayor Justin Elicker, Zannelli, and Board of Police Commissioners Chair Evelise Ribeiro convened a press conference on the third floor of police headquarters on Tuesday to announce that PERF has finished its work and issued its report.

That report — which is 140 pages long when including appendices — provides 33 recommendations across 11 different categories. Elicker and Zannelli said that the city’s temporary special order already incorporates some of the recommendations included in the PERF report. The police department has sent the report to the Board of Police Commissioners, which plans to review the report and work with the NHPD to develop new permanent general orders in the weeks and months ahead.

To quote directly from the PERF report itself, some of those recommendations include:

1. Develop and implement a comprehensive system of internal and external inspections and audits on the use, management, and payment of CIs.
2. Staff a unit in the NHPD tasked exclusively with conducting audits and inspections and with a priority on the highest-risk areas.
3. Post the findings and recommendations from all audits, along with an implementation timeline, on a public dashboard.
4. Enact a systematic, scheduled review protocol for all NHPD policies.
5. Update the department’s publicly accessible general order manual monthly, or more frequently if policies change.
6. Feature the risks of gambling addiction and the importance of making smart financial decisions in employee wellness training and ensure clinicians include it among the topics of discussion during wellness check-ins.
7. Provide annual wellness check-ins.

“My hope is that people have more trust” in the city and the police department in the wake of this scandal, Elicker said, “because they see that no one is above the law.”

How is it possible that Jacobson was able to steal from the CI fund over the course of such a long period of time? After all, Jacobson was still an assistant chief back in 2019. He didn’t become chief until 2022. How did no one in the NHPD or the city catch him in the intervening half-decade?

“Obviously the policy that was in place at the time was improperly followed,” Zannelli said. “Auditing would have caught this if those audits were going on at that time.”

“We’ve been asking ourselves that same question,” Elicker said about how it was possible that Jacobson was able to steal from the CI fund starting in 2019. “I think it’s fair to say that almost everyone was shocked by” the revelation of Jacobson’s theft.

“The checks and balances that we’ve been implementing” and that the city is going to adopt in the wake of this PERF report, he continued, will only work towards ensuring that “it doesn’t happen again.”

Police commission Chair Evelise Ribeiro.