Vermont has agreed to pay $175,000 to settle a lawsuit on behalf of a man who was charged with a crime for giving a state trooper the middle finger in 2018, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday.
The lawsuit was filed in 2021 by the ACLU of Vermont on behalf of Gregory Bombard, of St. Albans. It says Bombard’s First Amendment rights were violated after an unnecessary traffic stop and retaliatory arrest in 2018.
Trooper Jay Riggen stopped Bombard’s vehicle in St. Albans on Feb. 9, 2018, because he believed Bombard had shown him the middle finger, according to the lawsuit. Bombard denied that but says he did curse and display the middle finger once the initial stop was concluded.
This is settled law. It’s been this way for a long time. Multiple people have had huge monetary settlements in multiple states for being arrested for flipping off a cop.
My father-in-law smiled and waved at a CHP cop when driving through California and got pulled over and told that was illegal, but was let off with a warning. Which I always thought was bullshit. Sounds like it is.
But the guy liked cops. He was literally just saying hi to a cop because he liked cops.
He was a white evangelical (but never preachy) Republican from Indiana who was born in 1931. So not even a boomer, someone who had kids who were boomers. He died loving cops. He didn’t even hold it against that guy because he assumed he’d broken the law and was glad the nice cop let him off with a warning.
He was an old man and had some very archaic ideas about the world. When he was home, he watched old Westerns, sports, or Fox News. I assume he voted for Trump in 2016. But he was also super nice to everyone no matter who they were. He was just not a judgmental sort of guy on an individual level. He was the sort of person who would would have a friendly conversation to find out when the restaurant waiter got off their shift and what they were planning to do that day and said he hoped they had a good time doing it.
So he probably (I never asked) believed in the “gay agenda,” but would also be happy to have a friendly chat with some people hanging outside a gay bar if he happened to walked by and saw that people were standing there. Even if he knew it was a gay bar.
[It’s his birthday today, so he’s been on my mind.]
Cops are government employees, and hopefully the government cares about losing $175k over bullshit their employee did.
Yeah, they can afford to lose one or two, but if we all start flipping off cops and start getting charged, it’s going to add up.
