Two and a half years before Baltimore County Police Officer Derek Hadel punched Samuel “Big Sam” Brown during a February wellness check that led to Brown’s death, Hadel was under investigation for police misconduct, according to department records.

Those records show that the internal affairs division — which investigates officers for misconduct, corruption and policy violations — received a complaint after Hadel was involved in a November 2023 car accident.

“The accused Officer was involved in a preventable at-fault crash,” the report reads. “No Citizen or Citizen’s property was involved in this crash.”

Hadel, 32, damaged a department-owned vehicle, Baltimore County Police spokesperson Joy Lepola-Stewart confirmed.

She declined to answer further questions and directed The Banner to the Maryland attorney general’s Independent Investigations Division, which is investigating the Brown incident.

Kelsey Hartman, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, declined to comment about Hadel while the use-of-force case is under investigation.

The Banner submitted a request to the Baltimore County Police Department for records related to any administrative or criminal misconduct by Hadel, including complaints. The only documentation the department provided was an internal affairs report that found Hadel guilty of damaging the police car in April 2024.

Baltimore County police subsequently assigned him to “formal written counseling,” although it’s unclear how many days or weeks of counseling Hadel received.

Records show the nine-year veteran of the force was not suspended for the incident.

Neither Hadel nor Doug Jess, president of the county’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4, responded to a request for comment.

Jess previously asked the public to withhold judgment until the attorney general’s investigation is complete.

Brown use-of-force investigation

Hadel approached Brown at a Woodlawn intersection around 3:20 a.m. in February after someone called police to report a person sitting in their car for a long time.

Body camera footage shows Brown step outside his vehicle and hit Hadel’s arm once, then swat it again a moment later. The officer responded by punching Brown twice across the face, causing him to fall backward and crack his skull against the pavement.

Brown was hospitalized and died 10 days later.

The attorney general’s office is charged with investigating police-related fatalities, but it often takes a year or more to complete its probe.

Meanwhile, Brown’s family, friends and community members have called for Hadel’s immediate dismissal and prosecution.

Last month, the state’s medical examiner ruled Brown’s death a homicide.

The Banner spoke with three use-of-force experts who, after viewing body camera footage, were divided about whether Brown posed a threat to Hadel, but all agreed that the situation could have been de-escalated.

Hadel’s history

Hadel was reassigned to administrative duties in February after the deadly encounter with Brown, Lepola-Stewart said.

The use-of-force investigation is not Hadel’s first time being investigated by the attorney general’s office. The state cleared Hadel and four others of wrongdoing in an April 2024 pursuit that resulted in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 695 that killed Dimeka Thornton.

That crash happened six days after Baltimore County Police found Hadel responsible for the preventable car accident, according to records.

The officers sped over 90 miles an hour trying to stop a stolen Infiniti before the driver, DeMarco Davis, turned the wrong way up an exit ramp onto I-695 and into oncoming traffic, striking a car driven by Thornton and killing her.

Three years before the car accidents, Hadel’s wife, Anna, filed a petition for a protective order against her husband after an argument turned violent.

“Derek Hadel got irate ... and began smashing furniture, screaming at me in front of our kids, and broke a door,” his wife wrote in the petition. “He threatened to break everything if I didn’t come upstairs with him.”

Court records show Hadel backed his wife into a corner and smashed his head against her forehead, causing her to fall, trip on one of their three children’s toy trucks and break a toe.

Anna asked the court for temporary custody of the couple’s three children, but the case was dismissed after she skipped a scheduled court hearing three days after filing the petition.