Article from Reason by Joe Setyon.

Kicking a juvenile Latino teenager in the head. Spitting on him. Telling him: “Welcome to the white man’s world.” Threatening to plant a “kilo of coke” in another Latino teen’s pocket.

Those are just a few of the more horrifying allegations made against a Massachusetts cop in a federal indictment unsealed yesterday. The accusations stem from a February 2016 incident in which two Springfield police officers allegedly used excessive force after several Latino teens allegedly stole an unmarked police car.

It all started with a pizza run, according to a civil lawsuit filed in August by one of the teens. On the night of February 26, then-Officer Stephen Vigneault drove his unmarked car to pick up some pizza for former narcotics detective Gregg Bigda. The lawsuit says Bigda had been drinking rum, and Vigneault was hoping to sober him up.

The federal indictment, filed on October 25, names both Bigda and Vigneault as defendants. While arresting one of the juveniles, identified as E.P., Bigda “willfully deprived” him of his right “to be free from unreasonable seizures, which includes the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer,” the indictment says. The result was “bodily injury” sustained by E.P. The indictment says Vigneault acted in a similar manner while arresting another juvenile, identified as D.R.

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: By Tony Webster [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons