6 ms·

Vermont man arrested after giving trooper middle finger gets $175k

51 points by miles 2y ago

mcraiha 2y ago
Non paywall article: https://nationalpost.com/news/vermont-lawsuit-man-flipped-off-trooper https://nationalpost.com/news/vermont-lawsuit-man-flipped-of... And also it would be a better to use "state trooper" since word trooper can also describe other professions.
- Dban1 2y ago
  like Stormtrooper
- justin66 2y ago
  What profession did you think the headline referred to?
michaelmrose 2y ago
This is far from an isolated incident. Most of us who got screwed didn't get a payday or even an apology.
RockRobotRock 2y ago
It makes me incensed when the taxpayer foots the bill for a cops fuckup
- reaperman 2y ago
  I really think requiring police to carry their own insurance would help a lot here. It would obviously be hard to collect on a judgement against an officer’s pocketbook, but its easy to collect a payment owed by an insurance company. Plus its not weird - we already have many professions which de facto (or de jure) require the professional to find and pay for their own insurance - doctors, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. There are some downsides to the taxpayers under the private-insurance model. Assuming police are already paid about as little as we can get away with paying them, their salaries would have to increase by the average insurance premium. Over the long term, this should be equal to about 1.2x the awarded payouts. Assuming insurance company profit would be de jure capped at 20%, which happens for health insurance and auto insurance in some states - if the insurance company accidentally makes more profit they issue rebates to customers to bring down profits to the maximum level. So it could be argued that taxpayers would end up paying 20% more. But there’s some additional nuance which may lead to upsides for taxpayers wallets: 1) When a repeatedly problematic officer sees their premiums raised a lot, they’ll likely leave the profession. Removing the most egregious repeat-offenders will most likely lower the taxpayer’s bills. 2) Taxpayers in areas with sudden high judgments against them will be somewhat subsidized by taxpayers in other areas. This at least doesn’t suddenly victimize the taxpayers in areas where they are already victimized by police. 3) Police might be afraid of higher premiums, and change their practices to avoid judgements - thus lowering the taxpayer burden. Any changes in how police do their jobs to avoid higher premiums could have positive or negative externalities. - Would certain officers in the “in-group” get assigned lower-risk work and bank more take-home due to lower premiums, and others would be discriminated against by being assigned high-risk patrol areas and face higher premiums either as a result of their specific assigned duties or as a result of occasional interactions that are more likely to occur in those areas? - Would police officers be even more hesitant to rush into Uvalde High than they already are to stop active shooters? - Will police officers learn new techniques that are equally or more effective at reducing crime than current abuse-of-power techniques, or will they just avoid policing as much as they can to minimize the risk to their premiums and give criminals a permissive environment to operate in? Ideally we want to find a way to incentivize professional, courteous, AND effective policing to get the most value from tax-payers dollars. Many people believe courteous policing leads to effective policing, and many people believe the opposite (that more extreme / “rough” policing leads to more effective crime-reduction). For that reason alone I think it might be difficult to get private insurance requirements enacted. But I do think most people can agree that IF it’s possible to have courteous AND effective policing at the same time, that would be ideal.
  - zenogantner 2y ago
    It's cheaper for a (large enough) state to just damages/settlements, rather than paying insurance contributions. Many countries manage to have (mostly) courteous and effective professional police forces without using an insurance/private lawsuit based framework such as the one you suggest.
  - sdwr 2y ago
    Love the thought that went into this. I subscribe to the broken window theory of policing. Letting officers get away with small violations opens the door to bringing their ego to the job, and an "us vs them" mentality.
    - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
      Is that Open Window Theory, or Open Door theory?
  - mindslight 2y ago
    I'd say you're putting the cart before the horse. Currently there aren't very many insurable events, because there is essentially no liability. Correcting basic liability is the first step to reform. When a citizen is unjustly harmed, if an officer is not following written departmental policy then that officer should be personally liable, with the department as a jointly-liable fallback (for enabling them). If the officer is following written department policy, then only the department should be liable. This creates an incentive for municipalities to create written procedures that except situations like these (based on both the mens rea vindictiveness, and also the fact the victim had obviously broken no laws). Note that I'm not proposing some radical departure from known territory, but rather something that is still less than the general liability dynamic that applies to everyone else. Then if individual officers want insurance they can seek it out themselves, or if a municipality is worried about capitalization issues they can insist on it during negotiations.
- jokoon 2y ago
  Maybe people have learned how to exploit this for money It's easy, they just provoke cops who tend to not follow the law until they got a case. If I could get wrongly arrested by a cop or even hurt to gain 300k, that would be worth it, and I would imagine people would learn the law and observe cops to make it happen. It's very malicious, but it seems the gains are high.
  - arresin 2y ago
    There is a small but non zero chance of being shot.
    - ethanwillis 2y ago
      That's a risk I take every single day I go outside. Where I live there's over 100 shootings a year on the interstate alone in the loop around my city.
      - more_corn 2y ago
        Wow. When I was a kid I once asked my stepdad why people who live in super dangerous inner city neighborhoods didn’t move. His answer (some people can’t afford to move) didn’t satisfy me at the time. I thought to myself “bus tickets cost fifty bucks”. As a child I didn’t understand the nuances of life, but I also think there’s some power in childish naïveté.
  - fred_is_fred 2y ago
    There is absolutely a set of people doing this. You can find their clips on YouTube. Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsOA2VgqxzQ&pp=ygUbZ29kIGJsZXNzIGhvbWVsZXNzIHZldGVyYW5z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsOA2VgqxzQ&pp=ygUbZ29kIGJsZ...
    - RockRobotRock 2y ago
      Have you seen this channel? https://youtube.com/@audittheaudit?si=Q9r2ARA71itTa3Lw https://youtube.com/@audittheaudit?si=Q9r2ARA71itTa3Lw There are definitely “auditor” types who are provocative but that’s a small minority
- kelipso 2y ago
  In the end it's the government's fault (which implies the taxpayer's fault) for having a system where they hire these types of cops.
autoexec 2y ago
Good for him! I watched the dash cam video and while I'm still unsure if the man gave the cop the middle finger the first time, Jay Riggen absolutely deserved it after he pulled this innocent man over and harassed him just for exercising his freedom of speech. Anyone with an ego so fragile has no business wearing a badge. I'm disappointed that Jay was allowed to retire when he clearly should have been fired, but I'm thrilled that he won't be a cop anymore.
- randomtoast 2y ago
  Where can I find the dash cam video?
  - bewilderbeast 2y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OjgljiaZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OjgljiaZA
RecycledEle 2y ago
If cops only pay fines, their abuse of honest citizens gets worse. There needs to be felony prison time for cops who pull this kind of thing.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  The police unions spend too much time and effort protecting its worst members.
  - therobots927 2y ago
    The US police force is rotten to the core. They like to pretend like they’re military adjacent but in reality they’re just local gangs with taxpayer funding. There’s no overarching command structure nationally that you could use to reform the police force at a broad scale. In my opinion all police officers should be in the military and subject to military court and prison if they break the rules. It’s a failure in planning on the US governments part, in my opinion.
    - samrus 2y ago
      You don't want the military policing you bro
      - therobots927 2y ago
        I’ll explain by example: If police were military they could be “deployed” to areas of the country that they are not from. By shuffling officers periodically you could prevent the formation of cliques within the force at a local level. In Mississippi for example there is a lot of corruption and racism in the force, likely to a greater degree than what you would find in LA. And they answer to absolutely no one. Recently a mass grave of unnamed people was found behind a police station in Mississippi: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/18/a-mass-grave-of-hundreds-of-poor-and-oppressed-people-found-in-mississippi/ https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/18/a-mass-grave-of-hundr... For the reasons outlined above I would prefer police to be part of the military. Then maybe you would have some type of accountability. This southern cop behavior is the type of thing Blackwater got up to in Iraq. Non-military people who pretend like they’re the real deal without being beholden to a command structure are all but guaranteed to go rogue.
spigottoday 2y ago
How much did the lawyer get?
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  > According to the settlement, Mr. Bombard received $100,000, and $75,000 has been paid to his lawyers at FIRE and the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont.
_spduchamp 2y ago
In Canada, flipping the bird is a God-given right. "Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly. Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/middle-finger-god-given-right-quebec-judge-1.6772056 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/middle-finger-god-gi...
ddrdrck_ 2y ago
This sounds terribly odd to me as a European guy. We hear a lot of stories with US cops unloading their guns at people they feel are a menace, only to realize later these people were actually unarmed or just holding a phone. But if someone gives them a middle finger then it is all fine and cops should do nothing but lower their eyes !? In France to give the middle finger to a policeman or soldier or any other state representant would be considered an offense. People would be fined for this, and not even our leftists would contest that.
- frumper 2y ago
  What law would be broken by this offense?
  - krustyburger 2y ago
    Esprit de corps. Just kidding- maybe there’s an actual law involved. Either way this sort of example shows how much of an outlier the Bill of Rights is. It’s something worth protecting at all costs.
  - CodeArtisan 2y ago
    Contempt of civil servant https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044376061 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... google translate: https://www-legifrance-gouv-fr.translate.goog/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044376061?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-legifrance-gouv-fr.translate.goog/codes/article_...
    - singleshot_ 2y ago
      In America contempt of civil servants is more or less required.
- wil421 2y ago
  The Supreme Court said it was considered free speech to give the middle finger. If you yelled profanity at a police man in front of the public you could get a charge like disorderly conduct or something like that.
exabrial 2y ago
I'm glad he got a settlement, as the local government and police were 100% in the wrong. I'm hoping governments take note. But also just consider: you should be nice to people, and while it's certainly your right to use your freedoms as you wish, maybe consider less abrasive uses of your freedom when possible. The root of the problem is thus: by turning the police in tax collectors, we've created an environment ripe for abuse by government. The most peaceful and non-violent exit is to reduce the collection of taxes, giving us an offramp, and freeing them to actual investigate and prevent violent crimes and thefts.

51 points by miles 2y ago

Non paywall article: https://nationalpost.com/news/vermont-lawsuit-man-flipped-off-trooper https://nationalpost.com/news/vermont-lawsuit-man-flipped-of... And also it would be a better to use "state trooper" since word trooper can also describe other professions.

Dban1 2y ago
like Stormtrooper
justin66 2y ago
What profession did you think the headline referred to?

michaelmrose 2y ago

This is far from an isolated incident. Most of us who got screwed didn't get a payday or even an apology.

RockRobotRock 2y ago

It makes me incensed when the taxpayer foots the bill for a cops fuckup

reaperman 2y ago
I really think requiring police to carry their own insurance would help a lot here. It would obviously be hard to collect on a judgement against an officer’s pocketbook, but its easy to collect a payment owed by an insurance company. Plus its not weird - we already have many professions which de facto (or de jure) require the professional to find and pay for their own insurance - doctors, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. There are some downsides to the taxpayers under the private-insurance model. Assuming police are already paid about as little as we can get away with paying them, their salaries would have to increase by the average insurance premium. Over the long term, this should be equal to about 1.2x the awarded payouts. Assuming insurance company profit would be de jure capped at 20%, which happens for health insurance and auto insurance in some states - if the insurance company accidentally makes more profit they issue rebates to customers to bring down profits to the maximum level. So it could be argued that taxpayers would end up paying 20% more. But there’s some additional nuance which may lead to upsides for taxpayers wallets: 1) When a repeatedly problematic officer sees their premiums raised a lot, they’ll likely leave the profession. Removing the most egregious repeat-offenders will most likely lower the taxpayer’s bills. 2) Taxpayers in areas with sudden high judgments against them will be somewhat subsidized by taxpayers in other areas. This at least doesn’t suddenly victimize the taxpayers in areas where they are already victimized by police. 3) Police might be afraid of higher premiums, and change their practices to avoid judgements - thus lowering the taxpayer burden. Any changes in how police do their jobs to avoid higher premiums could have positive or negative externalities. - Would certain officers in the “in-group” get assigned lower-risk work and bank more take-home due to lower premiums, and others would be discriminated against by being assigned high-risk patrol areas and face higher premiums either as a result of their specific assigned duties or as a result of occasional interactions that are more likely to occur in those areas? - Would police officers be even more hesitant to rush into Uvalde High than they already are to stop active shooters? - Will police officers learn new techniques that are equally or more effective at reducing crime than current abuse-of-power techniques, or will they just avoid policing as much as they can to minimize the risk to their premiums and give criminals a permissive environment to operate in? Ideally we want to find a way to incentivize professional, courteous, AND effective policing to get the most value from tax-payers dollars. Many people believe courteous policing leads to effective policing, and many people believe the opposite (that more extreme / “rough” policing leads to more effective crime-reduction). For that reason alone I think it might be difficult to get private insurance requirements enacted. But I do think most people can agree that IF it’s possible to have courteous AND effective policing at the same time, that would be ideal.
- zenogantner 2y ago
  It's cheaper for a (large enough) state to just damages/settlements, rather than paying insurance contributions. Many countries manage to have (mostly) courteous and effective professional police forces without using an insurance/private lawsuit based framework such as the one you suggest.
- sdwr 2y ago
  Love the thought that went into this. I subscribe to the broken window theory of policing. Letting officers get away with small violations opens the door to bringing their ego to the job, and an "us vs them" mentality.
  - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    Is that Open Window Theory, or Open Door theory?
- mindslight 2y ago
  I'd say you're putting the cart before the horse. Currently there aren't very many insurable events, because there is essentially no liability. Correcting basic liability is the first step to reform. When a citizen is unjustly harmed, if an officer is not following written departmental policy then that officer should be personally liable, with the department as a jointly-liable fallback (for enabling them). If the officer is following written department policy, then only the department should be liable. This creates an incentive for municipalities to create written procedures that except situations like these (based on both the mens rea vindictiveness, and also the fact the victim had obviously broken no laws). Note that I'm not proposing some radical departure from known territory, but rather something that is still less than the general liability dynamic that applies to everyone else. Then if individual officers want insurance they can seek it out themselves, or if a municipality is worried about capitalization issues they can insist on it during negotiations.
jokoon 2y ago
Maybe people have learned how to exploit this for money It's easy, they just provoke cops who tend to not follow the law until they got a case. If I could get wrongly arrested by a cop or even hurt to gain 300k, that would be worth it, and I would imagine people would learn the law and observe cops to make it happen. It's very malicious, but it seems the gains are high.
- arresin 2y ago
  There is a small but non zero chance of being shot.
  - ethanwillis 2y ago
    That's a risk I take every single day I go outside. Where I live there's over 100 shootings a year on the interstate alone in the loop around my city.
    - more_corn 2y ago
      Wow. When I was a kid I once asked my stepdad why people who live in super dangerous inner city neighborhoods didn’t move. His answer (some people can’t afford to move) didn’t satisfy me at the time. I thought to myself “bus tickets cost fifty bucks”. As a child I didn’t understand the nuances of life, but I also think there’s some power in childish naïveté.
- fred_is_fred 2y ago
  There is absolutely a set of people doing this. You can find their clips on YouTube. Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsOA2VgqxzQ&pp=ygUbZ29kIGJsZXNzIGhvbWVsZXNzIHZldGVyYW5z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsOA2VgqxzQ&pp=ygUbZ29kIGJsZ...
  - RockRobotRock 2y ago
    Have you seen this channel? https://youtube.com/@audittheaudit?si=Q9r2ARA71itTa3Lw https://youtube.com/@audittheaudit?si=Q9r2ARA71itTa3Lw There are definitely “auditor” types who are provocative but that’s a small minority
kelipso 2y ago
In the end it's the government's fault (which implies the taxpayer's fault) for having a system where they hire these types of cops.

autoexec 2y ago

Good for him! I watched the dash cam video and while I'm still unsure if the man gave the cop the middle finger the first time, Jay Riggen absolutely deserved it after he pulled this innocent man over and harassed him just for exercising his freedom of speech. Anyone with an ego so fragile has no business wearing a badge. I'm disappointed that Jay was allowed to retire when he clearly should have been fired, but I'm thrilled that he won't be a cop anymore.

randomtoast 2y ago
Where can I find the dash cam video?
- bewilderbeast 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OjgljiaZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OjgljiaZA

RecycledEle 2y ago

If cops only pay fines, their abuse of honest citizens gets worse. There needs to be felony prison time for cops who pull this kind of thing.

jgalt212 2y ago
The police unions spend too much time and effort protecting its worst members.
- therobots927 2y ago
  The US police force is rotten to the core. They like to pretend like they’re military adjacent but in reality they’re just local gangs with taxpayer funding. There’s no overarching command structure nationally that you could use to reform the police force at a broad scale. In my opinion all police officers should be in the military and subject to military court and prison if they break the rules. It’s a failure in planning on the US governments part, in my opinion.
  - samrus 2y ago
    You don't want the military policing you bro
    - therobots927 2y ago
      I’ll explain by example: If police were military they could be “deployed” to areas of the country that they are not from. By shuffling officers periodically you could prevent the formation of cliques within the force at a local level. In Mississippi for example there is a lot of corruption and racism in the force, likely to a greater degree than what you would find in LA. And they answer to absolutely no one. Recently a mass grave of unnamed people was found behind a police station in Mississippi: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/18/a-mass-grave-of-hundreds-of-poor-and-oppressed-people-found-in-mississippi/ https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/18/a-mass-grave-of-hundr... For the reasons outlined above I would prefer police to be part of the military. Then maybe you would have some type of accountability. This southern cop behavior is the type of thing Blackwater got up to in Iraq. Non-military people who pretend like they’re the real deal without being beholden to a command structure are all but guaranteed to go rogue.

spigottoday 2y ago

How much did the lawyer get?

manuelmoreale 2y ago
> According to the settlement, Mr. Bombard received $100,000, and $75,000 has been paid to his lawyers at FIRE and the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont.

_spduchamp 2y ago

In Canada, flipping the bird is a God-given right. "Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly. Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/middle-finger-god-given-right-quebec-judge-1.6772056 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/middle-finger-god-gi...

ddrdrck_ 2y ago

This sounds terribly odd to me as a European guy. We hear a lot of stories with US cops unloading their guns at people they feel are a menace, only to realize later these people were actually unarmed or just holding a phone. But if someone gives them a middle finger then it is all fine and cops should do nothing but lower their eyes !? In France to give the middle finger to a policeman or soldier or any other state representant would be considered an offense. People would be fined for this, and not even our leftists would contest that.

frumper 2y ago
What law would be broken by this offense?
- krustyburger 2y ago
  Esprit de corps. Just kidding- maybe there’s an actual law involved. Either way this sort of example shows how much of an outlier the Bill of Rights is. It’s something worth protecting at all costs.
- CodeArtisan 2y ago
  Contempt of civil servant https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044376061 https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... google translate: https://www-legifrance-gouv-fr.translate.goog/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000044376061?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-legifrance-gouv-fr.translate.goog/codes/article_...
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    In America contempt of civil servants is more or less required.
wil421 2y ago
The Supreme Court said it was considered free speech to give the middle finger. If you yelled profanity at a police man in front of the public you could get a charge like disorderly conduct or something like that.

exabrial 2y ago

I'm glad he got a settlement, as the local government and police were 100% in the wrong. I'm hoping governments take note. But also just consider: you should be nice to people, and while it's certainly your right to use your freedoms as you wish, maybe consider less abrasive uses of your freedom when possible. The root of the problem is thus: by turning the police in tax collectors, we've created an environment ripe for abuse by government. The most peaceful and non-violent exit is to reduce the collection of taxes, giving us an offramp, and freeing them to actual investigate and prevent violent crimes and thefts.