A city police officer who retired while being investigated for allegedly faking extra-duty shifts at Tweed New Haven Airport will receive his pension benefits.
That’s the latest with Nicholas Gogliettino, an eight-year veteran of the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) who retired on Aug. 6.
Gogliettino’s retirement was included as an information-only item on the agenda for Thursday’s latest monthly meeting of the city’s Police & Fire Pension Fund (P&F).
The administrative approval of his “age annuity retirement” — which did not require a vote by the pension fund trustees — comes after Gogliettino retired while still the subject of a police department Internal Affairs (IA) investigation into allegations that he had signed in to an app on“numerous” occasions to report he had shown up for shifts at the airport when he was in fact at home. Police discovered the problem when a car crash occurred at the airport at the end of the officer’s shift but he wasn’t on site, despite having signed in.
On Friday, Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that the IA investigation is still ongoing. Jacobson otherwise declined to comment on this case.
Gogliettino’s name appeared under “Item 4” of Thursday’s pension fund agenda, in a section titled “Age Annuity Retirement — Information Only.”
“Age Annuity Retirement applicants qualify for an age annuity retirement which does not require trustee review, discretion, or vote,” that part of the agenda states. “Annuity pensions are administratively accepted and processed.”
Gogliettino was the only officer listed in this part of the agenda, which stated that he was hired on Oct. 3, 2016 and retired on Aug. 6, 2025.
The agenda then lists his years of service as “10.84 (including 2 years of prior police service buyback)”
The city police union’s contract states that officers’ pension rights “vest” after ten years of continuous service with the department. Officers can reach that threshold with the help of “buying back” sick, military, prior city service, or prior police service time.
When the Independent first reported on Gogliettino being sworn in by the city police department back in 2017 — at 46 years old, he was the oldest member of that year’s class of police academy graduates — he said that he had previously worked as a judicial marshal, including at the Whalley Avenue lock-up for the prior nine years.
The trustees present at Thursday’s meeting didn’t discuss Gogliettino’s retirement or pension benefits, as that part of the agenda was information only.
The same was true for another part of the agenda — called “Contribution Withdrawals” — which refers to officers who have resigned before vesting for their pension benefits. Those officers are entitled to have returned to them the money they set aside in each paycheck for their pension contributions, since they won’t actually be getting city pension benefits.
One of the four former officers listed in this part of the agenda is Trevor Canace, whose “participation date” is listed as June 29, 2020, and “withdrawal date” is listed as Aug. 14, 2025.
Canace, who joined the local police department in June 2020, resigned earlier this year after the police chief recommended that he be fired following two IA investigations that found that Canace violated departmental policy, including by engaging in a high-speed pursuit during which he drove as fast as 119 miles per hour on I‑95. Canace quit on the same day that the police commission was scheduled to vote on whether or not he should be fired.
State law prohibits officers like Gogliettino and Canace who quit while under investigation for alleged misconduct from serving as a police officer anywhere else in Connecticut.
Gogliettino and Canace could not be reached for comment by the publication time of this article. City police union President Florencio Cotto did not respond to a request for comment.