Board rules against officer
Oversight panel says Springfield’s Bidga ‘not certified’ to wear badge
The state’s police oversight board ruled Monday that Springfield police Officer Gregg Bidga, sidelined from his department since 2018 over a series of alleged disciplinary infractions, is not certified to wear a badge.
Retired Judge Charles J. Hely, acting as a hearing officer for the Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, recommended in an 18-page initial ruling that the commission “deny Officer Bigda’s application for recertification.”
Cindy Campbell, a commission spokesperson, said Tuesday that Bigda is classified as “not certified” after Hely’s decision, meaning he hasn’t satisfied all the recertification criteria. But he is not permanently barred from working as a police officer.
“A decertified officer cannot work for a law enforcement agency in any capacity,” Campbell said. “Bigda is not decertified at this time.”
Bigda’s lawyer said his client will contest the initial decision.
He has “30 days to file objections with the POST Commission to the initial decision which he absolutely intends to do,” Donald C. Keavany Jr. said in a statement. Keavany said the commission’s decision was not final and did not affect Bigda’s “current status as a police officer.”
A Springfield Police Department spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.
In September, The Boston Globe reported that Bigda, a 29-year-veteran of the force, hasn’t done any police work since 2018 after a long string of alleged abuses yet remained on the city’s payroll.
He was set to receive $83,616 in 2023 alone, while suing the city for damages, including funds lost from hypothetical lost overtime and private detail pay, the Globe reported.
Springfield officials said last fall they had no way to fire Bigda and make it hold up. Their
last, best hope, they indicated at the time, was the POST Commission, which was created in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to address police misconduct.
Bigda’s most high-profile misstep in February 2016 sparked a federal indictment.
In that matter, a Springfield officer stopping to pick up an order from a pizzeria left his cruiser idling outside, and a group of teens hopped in the vehicle and took it for a joyride into nearby Palmer.
Bigda got word of the theft, gave chase, and arrested two of the teens. The brutality of those arrests — Bigda broke one boy’s nose and taunted: “Welcome to the white man’s world” — shocked another responding detective from nearby Wilbraham and he lodged a complaint of excessive force against Bigda.
The Springfield Police Department investigated and thencommissioner John Barbieri suspended Bigda for 60 days for his conduct. Critics lambasted him for letting Bigda off easy, but Barbieri said he did not think firing Bigda would have survived an appeal.
“The February 27, 2016, video recording of Officer Bigda’s behavior in the cells of the Palmer Police Station cannot be disputed,” Hely wrote in his decision Monday. “Officer Bigda’s threats and abusive behavior toward the fifteen-year-old and sixteen-year-old boys were shocking and inexplicable.”
Three weeks later, Hely wrote, Bigda “twice made criminal entry into the home of his ex-girlfriend,” and responding cops “both reported that he was intoxicated.”
In the Palmer incident, Bigda spent hours with the teenagers inside a holding cell at the Palmer police station, the Globe has reported. Video cameras captured most of the vulgar interaction. In one clip, Bigda calls one of the teens an . . . (expletive).” He assumes that the other does not know who his father is. He threatens to bring both back to the Springfield police station where the holding cells don’t have cameras.
“When we hit that (expletive) [city] line, I’m going to bloody your body,” he tells one of the teens. “If anything happens to you at my place, it never happened. If I don’t write it in the report, it never (expletive) happened. Do you want this to be the worst day of your life?”
But Barbieri told reporters he did not see the video until that fall, well after the window to fire Bigda had passed. The collective bargaining agreement for the Springfield police officers stipulates that an officer can only be fired within 90 days of the date of the offense, a provision common in police union contracts across the state.
By the time Bigda returned to the force after his suspension, the interrogation video had been widely circulated online by the Springfield Republican newspaper. With that notoriety, his mere involvement in a case became enough to blight entire criminal prosecutions, resulting in several reduced sentences or outright dismissals.
One suspect who was facing up to 30 years in prison on drug trafficking charges was released on time served. Why? Bigda was the primary witness for the prosecution, according to court records, and would surely have faced withering cross-examination about his record and character.
Bigda was indicted federally for falsifying records, abusive interrogation, and excessive force in October 2018, two years after the beating. He was suspended without pay. But in 2021, he was acquitted on all charges after jurors found that his conduct was not so egregious that it “shocks the conscience.” The verdict meant he was entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of back pay, as well as reinstatement to the force.
In 2022, the former narcotics detective received $232,443, according to payroll records. But the city has refused to budge on reinstatement and has continued to withhold a badge from Bigda ever since.
Since 2000, Bigda has averaged nearly two misconduct complaints a year, and Springfield has weathered at least eight lawsuits centered on his alleged abuses, paying out $979,500 to plaintiffs between 2013 and 2023, the Globe has reported.
Bigda is also facing a drunk driving charge in Palmer District Court, stemming from his arrest in Palmer in October for allegedly operating a white Infiniti while intoxicated.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 28, records show.
After his arrest, Springfield police Superintendent Cheryl Clapprood suspended him without pay for five days, a department spokesperson said at the time, describing the penalty as the highest level of discipline Clapprood could impose.