Hired to overhaul internal probes, suspended Baltimore Police commander faces scrutiny

To Baltimore Police’s rank and file, the news was deeply ironic: The department’s top official assigned to investigate officer misconduct was under investigation.

Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau became the subject of a Maryland State Police probe last week, following an earlier announcement that he had been suspended. Commissioner Richard Worley has not publicly provided a reason for the suspension.

Officials have lauded Nadeau as a change agent who brought reform to one of the most dysfunctional branches of the historically troubled agency. But others interviewed by The Banner described him as an unwilling partner when it came to policing officers. Yet lawsuits filed by current and former officers portray him as an overzealous leader who manipulated internal investigations to his predetermined conclusions.

The Banner was unable to reach Nadeau for comment.

It’s unclear whether those allegations are behind the probe into Nadeau, and Worley has said the deputy commissioner’s suspension is unrelated to Nadeau’s work investigating and disciplining officers. Officials have said they don’t know how long the probe will take, but Nadeau will remain suspended until it concludes.

Sgt. Mike Mancuso, the outgoing president of the Baltimore City Lodge No. 3 Fraternal Order of Police, which represents the police department’s rank and file, said he is familiar with the allegations that prompted Nadeau’s suspension. Although he did not disclose them, he said he doesn’t see how the deputy commissioner can stay on the force.

“I do not believe he would be able to fulfill his duties in a meaningful way if he returned to the BPD,” Mancuso said.

Nadeau joined Baltimore Police in 2019, as the city was two years into a federal consent decree to correct decades of unconstitutional policing. The department was ordered to overhaul the way it handled complaints against officers by their peers and the public to regain community trust.

That was Nadeau’s mission.

From his perch atop the Public Integrity Bureau, Nadeau oversaw all internal investigations into officers and signed off on discipline.

“I don’t think any other part of the department more needed a complete makeover,” U.S. District Judge James Bredar, who oversees the department’s compliance with the consent decree, said at a 2021 hearing. “And I’m happy to observe that I think you, DC Nadeau, are in the process of delivering exactly that.”

The agency has touted expedited internal investigations, with a growing percentage being resolved within six months. But a backlog of hundreds of cases stands in the way of consent decree compliance.

At the same time Nadeau was reaping praise from top brass and consent decree officials, he was facing internal backlash from a rank and file resistant to changing discipline standards.

At an April consent decree hearing, Nadeau said officers were facing criminal charges for misconduct that used to be handled internally. He said most of the backlogged cases today relate to an increase in internal charges for “minor training issues.”

But Nadeau’s critics say the backlash was merited. And some outside of the organization took issue with his leadership for different reasons.

Debbie Katz Levi, a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, met with Nadeau shortly after he took the new job. At the time, she was director of special litigation at the Office of the Public Defender, a role in which she focused on police misconduct.

At that meeting, Levi said, her team offered to continue to identify potentially problematic officers, but Nadeau did not appear interested in another agency’s help.

“Unlike the leaders who came before him, Deputy Commissioner Nadeau never took us up on that offer,” Levi said, noting that she was speaking for herself and not representing her old employer at the public defender’s office.

She described Nadeau’s silence as a missed opportunity to work with the people who represented those harmed by police misconduct. The meeting happened shortly after the Gun Trace Task Force scandal of 2017, which exposed a unit of corrupt cops convicted of stealing from residents and planting drugs or guns on them.

To those who recruited him to the police department, Nadeau’s previous career made him seem like the perfect man for the job.

In introducing Nadeau in 2019, then-Commissioner Michael Harrison said the new deputy commissioner was familiar with the city and brought “forth a national platform and national experience.”

Nadeau began his career as a police officer in Maine and then spent more than two decades with the FBI. At one point, he led the public corruption unit at the FBI’s New York field office, according to the Wall Street Journal. In that capacity, Nadeau oversaw a team that used wiretaps and undercover agents to take down a host of state lawmakers.

“The reason why public corruption is such an important priority for the bureau is those people are put in a position of trust,” Nadeau said at the time.

Former BPD Detective Joe Landsman worked under Nadeau from about 2016 to 2019 as a task force officer in the FBI’s gang unit in Baltimore. Nadeau oversaw that team as an assistant special agent in charge.

Landsman described Nadeau as largely supportive of his team’s work, recalling Nadeau popping into the field office’s wiretap room and checking in on investigators.

“Every time he came down, it was always, ‘Whatever you guys need,’” Landsman said. “He wasn’t really in the thick of the investigations.”

Landsman described Nadeau as a smart and by-the-book agent at the FBI before he jumped ship for Baltimore Police.

Some legal experts believe it’s too early, and that too little is known about the allegations against Nadeau, to pass judgment on his tenure, suspension or potential ouster.

“What remains unclear is whether or not this is internal resistance to the type of reforms that are critical to restoring or at least building trust with the Baltimore Police Department” or an interpersonal matter, said law professor David Jaros, faculty director of the University of Baltimore’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform.

But a half dozen current and former officers have filed federal and state lawsuits alleging they were wrongfully fired or unfairly disciplined under Nadeau. The suits, most filed in the last two years, named the police department and Nadeau individually as defendants.

All ongoing, the complaints accuse Nadeau of overseeing a unit with a propensity for retaliating against officers who complained and of doling out disparate punishments.

In one lawsuit, a detective alleged he was fired at Nadeau’s direction for a minor timekeeping infraction. In another, an officer said Nadeau’s internal affairs detectives leaked details of an investigation into her internal complaint to a civilian who harassed her. Another detective claimed in court papers he was suspended after being accused of consuming marijuana when he was using legal, nonintoxicating cannabinoid ointment to treat pain from a foot injury he sustained after being struck by a drunk driver on duty.

The officers who filed the suits are represented by a pair of former city prosecutors, Michael Turiello and Patrick Jennings, who declined to comment.

Defense lawyer and former prosecutor Andrew Alperstein, president of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Association, reviewed the lawsuits and said the allegations are “deeply troubling” and could have a chilling effect if proven true.

Police officials often tout improvement in handling officer misconduct cases as a sign the agency has moved on from a problematic history, Alperstein said.

But now that the person charged with implementing those reforms faces questions about his leadership of the internal affairs unit, “it just leads to a lack of confidence by everybody,” he said.

Banner reporter Justin Fenton contributed to this article.