by Allan Appel The New Haven independent
At Thursday’s CMT meeting at the Fair Haven library.
Fair Haven District Manager Sgt. Chris Alvarado touched his finger lightly to the badge on his chest and said, “When something like this happens” — referring to the bombshell resignation of Police Chief Karl Jacobson when confronted with his alleged theft from a criminal informants’ fund — “it happens to all of us.”
And not only to the whole of the New Haven Police Department, Alvarado added, but to police officers all across the country.
He expressed full confidence in David Zannelli, who has stepped in as acting chief and who, like Alvarado, was a highly regarded Fair Haven district manager in 2017 and 2018. In the NHPD, Alvarado said, “those who mess up are held accountable,” and that includes Karl Jacobson.
Not everyone entirely agreed.
That was the varied emotional atmosphere Thursday night, with the Jacobson scandal very much the elephant in the room, at the regular and first meeting of 2026 of the Fair Haven Community Management Team (FHCMT).
The gathering drew about two dozen people in person and another two dozen online to the community room at the Fair Haven Branch Library on Grand Avenue.
Just before the formal meeting and presentations got under way, Darlene Casella — a retired clinical social worker, long-time Fair Havener, and, for many years, the treasurer of the FHCMT — said she felt both sadness and shock.
“I feel terrible about it because I met him when he first became chief and to me he has been good for New Haven and to Fair Haven,” Casella said about Jacobson, who was sworn in as the city’s police chief in July 2022. “Solid, decent, fair, approachable, yet a no-nonsense chief, and that’s why this is so upsetting.”
Casella remembered with great fondness the schmoozy reception the FHCMT put on, with pastries from Rocco’s, the local Italian bakery, when Jacobson dropped by to introduce himself to Fair Haveners in his new top role 2022.
“I made a small sign, on bright red paper,” she remembered. “It read Welcome to Fair Haven, Chief Jacobson.”
Before he left that gathering four years ago, Casella recalled that Jacobson asked if he might take the sign with him. “Of course,” she said, “it’s your sign. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to put it in my office,” she remembered him replying.
Some months later Casella heard from someone who had been in the office, and there indeed the sign was on the wall, just as he said.
Alvarado’s presentation of the cumulative police stats for Fair Haven in 2025 – “a really good year” with incidents down in violent and major crime categories — wasn’t intended to be a nod of praise or defense for Jacobson, but you couldn’t fault someone for interpreting it that way.
When an audience member asked how did Alvarado explain or account for the marked decline in crime, he cited, “the community’s playing a bigger part, people are calling the police and we also have some more officers; it’s having more people out there.”
Ward 14 Alder Sarah Miller offered her praise of the police work this way, referring to more vigorous enforcement that is reflected in a generally better quality-of-life feeling for the area: “They’re really on it, the stores that are open after 11 [when they should be closed], and now they are closed]; lingering issues that they finally are dealing with; stuff that has been ignored is now being systematically looked at. Kudos!”
As to how the news of Jacobson’s theft was received in the department, Alvarado said, “We were as shocked, if not more so, than you are.” He said the investigation — to be led by the New Britain state’s attorney’s office — is going to take time as it is many layered.
Alvarado also underlined a point that he said may not be fully appreciated: Namely, that the way the assistant chiefs — Zannelli, Bertram Ettienne, and Manmeet Bhagtana — confronted Jacobson as soon as they had gathered the reports may seem like a simple, straightforward thing to do. However, “it was extremely difficult,” and a measure or indicator of the confidence he has in the department.
His conclusion: “Zannelli is a strong leader. And [although] we got off to a rough start, we’re looking forward to a good year.”
Most of the Fair Haveners present at Thursday’s meeting were, at least by this reporter’s read of the room’s mood meter, in a subdued state of low-keyed sadness and perhaps shock, and simply remained silent when asked if they had questions about Alvarado’s presentation.
But not everyone in the FHCMT audience was without question or skepticism about the general atmosphere of trust in the police department and city as a whole.
Citing not only the Jacobson affair, but the cases in 2025 of Sgt. Shayna Kendall and Officer Nicholas Gogliettino — two NHPD officers who recently retired under a legal cloud of having allegedly misrepresented, respectively, a traffic stop incident and having submitting phony shift reports — Christina Griffin, the FHCMT’s recording secretary, asked Alvarado if there isn’t “a general climate of mistrust when scandals happen with city employees?”
Don’t there need to be more checks and balances, she pressed, or some step to fill in gaps? Or perhaps too low pay is a factor “because mistakes keep happening.”
Restricting himself to the police department, Alvarado answered, “Kendall messed up, and she’s [been held] accountable. Jacobson messed up and he’s being held accountable. Some were complacent but they’ve been held accountable. I don’t believe there’s a bad culture” in the police department.
Ward 9 Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith, who was also in attendance at the meeting, said she appreciated Alvarado’s presentation. She termed the chief’s reported self-confessed theft and his pre-emptive resignation “deeply upsetting” and she endorsed the steps being taken “to understand what’s going on so that trust in the officers and the process is maintained and not eroded.”
Casella isn’t done with touching base, on the human level, with the police department. She said she had recently sent a note of support to Zannelli as he helms the department through the investigation and she reported he got back to her immediately with a thanks.
She isn’t through yet. “I’m going to send a note to Jacobson, too. I’m going to tell him we all have flaws, we all have demons, and I’m going to wish him the best.”