It all started, Greg Bombard said, with a broken coffee maker. That’s what prompted him to hop in his car and head to Dunkin’ on a winter day in 2018.
It ended this month when the state of Vermont paid Bombard $175,000 to settle the lawsuit that ultimately resulted from that short trip.
The agreement covers Bombard’s arrest that day by a state trooper who said the St. Albans Town man gave him the middle finger, and a second related citation nearly six years later on Christmas Day.
While the state has not admitted wrongdoing, the years-long saga points to a lasting risk that when emotions run high, police could misuse their powers to arrest citizens for offensive speech.
The Vermont State Police declined to discuss the case, as did the former police officer who arrested Bombard, Sergeant Jay Riggen. He retired due to disability on May 31, a week before the agreement was signed.
Bombard, in an interview with Seven Days and Vermont Public, revealed new details about the series of events and explained how he became a reluctant spokesperson for the constitutional right to scold a police officer.
All I wanted on February 9, 2018 was a cup of coffee. Bombard, 51 years old at the time, had the day off from his customer service job at a big-box store. He was walking home from Dunkin’ with a cold beer, waiting at a red light on Main Street in St. Albans, when he saw flashing lights behind him. He stopped near a mound of cleared snow.
Riggen walked up to the Mazda and looked at Bombard from under his wide-brimmed hat. Riggen spoke forcefully, an approach the soldier would later describe under oath as “alpha.” His interaction was captured by Riggen’s dash camera and a microphone he was wearing.
“You need something?” Riggen asked Bombard.
Bombard had no idea what he had done wrong.
“It seemed like, uh, you had me fooled while you were passing by,” Riggen pressed.
“I cheated?” -Bombard asked curiously.
Minutes earlier, Riggen had passed Bombard as the two drove in opposite directions down Main Street. Riggen claimed Bombard looked at him, raised his fist and extended his left middle finger over the steering wheel. Then the police officer turned on the dash camera, turned around and turned on the lights.
Now, Bombard explained to the police officer that there was a misunderstanding. Bombard had simply been stretching his fingers over the edge of the wheel, cigarette in hand. “I was doing this,” he demonstrated.
Riggen didn’t seem convinced. It seemed as if Bombard had stuck his middle finger “in my face,” he said.
Bombard replied: “You must be very sensitive.”
“First of all, I’m not a very sensitive person,” Riggen responded. “And it’s the first time in 12 years I’ve stopped someone who I thought had cheated on me, so I don’t like that implication.”
He told Bombard that he had stopped him to “make sure he was okay” and admitted that perhaps Bombard had not turned him around.
“So I have a question,” Bombard said. “If someone has deceived you, what is the summons? What is the crime?
Bombard chuckled.
Riggen said tricking a cop could serve as a way to get an officer’s attention, either “because you need help or you need to have a conversation.”
“It’s obviously not normal behavior, so I’m going to have that conversation,” Riggen said.
Bombard told Riggen that he planned to file a complaint against him. He kept asking questions.
The soldier walked away as Bombard spoke.
Then Bombard did something he said was out of character. As he walked back into traffic, he gave Riggen the middle finger, for real this time. He yelled “Asshole!” and “Fuck you!”
Riggen brought Bombard closer again. “I’m going to arrest him for disorderly conduct,” the police officer said over the radio. He called for reinforcements.
Riggen ordered Bombard out of the car, alleging that he had engaged in “tumultuous” and “profane behavior in public.”
“Are you serious, sir?” Bombard said. “Oh Lord.”
Riggen scolded Bombard for having the “audacity” to harass a soldier and call him a moron.
He searched Bombard for weapons (only found ChapStick) and handcuffed him. He took Bombard to the state police headquarters for processing and towed his Mazda.
“It humiliated me,” Bombard said.
State police issued a news release about the arrest, including Bombard’s mugshot, and local newspapers reported the charge.
Bombard hired a lawyer and nearly a year later, the state dropped the case. The crime he was charged with, disorderly conduct, is a kind of general misdemeanor for unruly conduct. The law contains vague language about using “abusive or obscene language” in a public place, making “unreasonable noise” or, as Riggen had noted, acting in a “tumultuous” manner.
Bombard was not the first person to face a disorderly conduct charge for pointing the finger at a police officer. The phenomenon was even the subject of a lengthy academic paper in 2008 whose author, Ira Robbins, a professor at American University Washington School of Law, concluded that such arrests undermine trust in the police and violate the First Amendment rights of who use the gesture. The cycle of subpoenas and civil lawsuits has continued. Last year, Delaware State Police paid $50,000 to a man arrested for giving officers the middle finger.
Bombard had reservations about filing a civil suit. He worried about the attention he might attract. Bombard said he harbors no animosity toward police. He has received speeding tickets over the years, something he said he deserved.
“They were very respectful and very kind,” he said.
“The basis of a free society must be measured by how a person is allowed to speak with public officials. Are you allowed to speak against them? Are those people allowed to speak offensive language?
Jay Diaz, attorney
Following the killing of George Floyd and increased public protests over police misconduct in 2020, Bombard said, he decided to file the case Bombard v. Riggen and the state of Vermont. He thought suing the Vermont State Police might put him back in the news, but it would also shine a spotlight on what he saw as police misconduct. He reached out to the ACLU of Vermont and attorney Jay Diaz.
Díaz, now a member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a Pennsylvania-based free speech group, saw the case as a test of civil liberties.
“The basis of a free society should be measured by how a person is allowed to speak with public officials,” Díaz said. “Are you allowed to speak against them? Are those people allowed to speak offensive language?”
The civil suit persisted. Late last year, Diaz entered the dashcam video of Riggen’s encounters into the court file. His organization also posted the video on YouTube.
The public post garnered more than 70,000 views and was picked up by national media outlets. Some of those viewers, in turn, felt compelled to express their own displeasure with Riggen’s behavior. Dozens of people mocked the police officer on Facebook. They found an old post announcing that Riggen, who taught communication skills at Vermont Community College, had won a teaching excellence award in 2019. “Private Riggin (sic) is a tyrant, an egomaniac,” one man wrote from Las Vegas.
In the days after the video was released on Dec. 18 of last year, the state police dispatch center was inundated with calls about Riggen. The calls were relentless on Christmas Day, when state police headquarters was closed and calls to the non-emergency line were routed to the emergency communications center. Numerous callers, mostly men, complained, interrupted or berated the dispatcher who answered the phone. One man said his name was “Big Bird.”
“Can I talk to a deputy or a cop, or whatever you want to call one of your clowns?” another caller said, according to audio obtained by Seven Days and Vermont Public.
“You know what? I’m on an overdose call,” a dispatcher responded. “You can hold on.”
Someone in dispatch (it’s unclear who) believed Bombard was behind the bombing. An operator claimed she recognized his voice on the phone, according to internal emails, although there is no evidence in audio recordings or state police reports that Bombard had called.
However, state police asked Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy Justin Oddy to serve a criminal summons on Bombard at his home. The alleged crime: disorderly conduct by telephone.
On Christmas night, Oddy walked past strings of multicolored lights to Bombard’s front door. “I’m sorry I’m the guy who delivers this to you for Christmas,” Oddy said.
“Did you call VSP several times today?” Oddy asked politely.
“Someone’s playing,” replied Bombard, who had been receiving online messages from strangers. “You can check my phone.”
Sensing Bombard’s surprise, Oddy acknowledged that the way the state police had handled the situation seemed “a little silly.”
“If it were me, I probably would have called or come over and said, ‘Hey, why are you calling so much? What’s the problem here?’” Oddy told Bombard.
Franklin County State’s Attorney Bram Kranichfeld quickly dropped the charge because he said police lacked evidence. But Bombard said the Christmas visit had been disturbing.
“I felt like maybe it was some kind of corruption, some revenge against me,” he said. “But we don’t know.”
The errant Christmas Day citation is also covered by the $175,000 settlement, of which $100,000 will go to Bombard. The remaining $75,000 will be split between Diaz’s group and the ACLU of Vermont, Diaz said. It’s an unusually large amount for such a case, although the state admitted no wrongdoing as part of it. The state also did not agree to make other changes Bombard sought. Diaz had called on the state police to more clearly enshrine First Amendment protections in department policy and provide more training to officers on the issue.
“That falls on the higher ups,” Díaz said.
The line of freedom of expression is not always clear. Diaz defended Christmas Day callers inspired by his organization’s release of the dash cam video, while saying people should not harass public officials or try to “scare people.” Communications made to “terrorize, intimidate, threaten, harass, or annoy” another person are illegal under Vermont law.
Bombard’s experience has not encouraged him to use his middle finger more to vent his frustration. In fact, quite the opposite: “I don’t encourage anyone to do it,” he said.
“I was disrespectful,” Bombard admitted of that cold day in 2018. “However, I don’t think they should have arrested me for that.”
This story was reported in collaboration with Seven Days.
Do you have questions, comments or advice? send us a message.
Keynote USA
For the Latest Local News, Follow Keynote USA Local on Twitter.