Vermont must pay $175,000 to a man who was arrested for giving a police officer the middle finger

“This incident should never have happened,” said Hillary Rich, attorney for the ACLU of Vermont, in a statement Wednesday. “Police must respect the First Amendment rights of all people – even when they do things they find offensive or abusive.”

Riggen stopped Bombard in St. Albans in February 2018 because he believed Bombard was giving him the middle finger, according to the complaint the ACLU filed on Bombard’s behalf in 2021.

The complaint states that Riggen interrogated Bombard, who denied the gesture, for “several minutes” before saying he could leave.

As he drove away, Bombard “cursed and gave the middle finger,” the lawsuit says. Riggen then stopped him again and told him he was under arrest and that his “profane public conduct” was a misdemeanor, the document says.

Bombard was detained and held for over an hour, his car was towed, the lawsuit says, and the Franklin County prosecutor charged him with disturbing the peace. The ACLU said he was “forced to endure a criminal trial for nearly a year” before the charges were dropped.

The prosecutor later filed a second charge of disturbing the peace against Bombard in connection with the same incident, alleging that he “recklessly created a danger of public nuisance” by obstructing traffic during a traffic stop. However, that charge was dismissed by the court before a plea agreement was reached.

Under the 12th of June As part of the settlement, the state of Vermont will pay $100,000 in damages to Bombard and $75,000 in legal fees to the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the two nonprofit organizations that represented him in the case and announced the agreement on Wednesday.

According to the settlement, Riggen and the state of Vermont have not admitted to the allegations made against them in the lawsuit or to liability. The Vermont State Police and the Vermont Governor’s Office did not immediately respond to a late-night request for comment. State police told NBC5 that Riggen retired from the force on May 31.

“I hope that with this settlement, the Vermont State Police will train their officers not to suppress criticism or conduct warrantless car stops,” Bombard said, according to the ACLU Vermont press release. “And now I can at least pay my criminal defense attorney to defend me against the false charges and take my 88-year-old mother out to a nice dinner.”

In 2019, a federal appeals court ruled that shouting a curse word at a police officer was constitutionally protected speech and not grounds for arrest. Just weeks earlier, another federal appeals court ruled that a Michigan woman’s constitutional rights had been violated after she was stopped and ticketed for giving an officer the middle finger.

The appeals court judge ruled that the “all too familiar gesture” was “protected by the First Amendment.”