Opinion ID: 2169282
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the scope of jurisdiction

Text: It would seem appropriate to deal first with the principal basis upon which both decisions below were predicated, namely, that under the statute footnoted above the powers of Authority police officers, no matter their inherent scope, may be exercised only within the narrow geographical ambit of the bridge, tunnel, plaza, or approach facilities mentioned therein. One would be inclined to pause at the threshold to question this narrow supposition for several reasons, not the least being the broad scope of the statutory language itself: In addition, the members of such police force shall have all the powers conferred by law on police officers or constables in the enforcement of laws of this state and the apprehension of violators thereof. [ N.J.S.A. 32:2-25]. But the courts whose actions we review sensed a relationship between this clause and the sentence which preceded it. The motion judge held: The Port Authority police had absolutely no authority to pursue the course of conduct that was followed by them on June 11, 1974. N.J.S.A. 32:2-25    states the ambit of the Port Authority police's power. The legislature gave the police express authority to act in the same capacity as any other police force but only within Port Authority territory, i.e. bridges and tunnels   . By the same token the Appellate Division determined that: This legislative authority limits the geographical area within which Port Authority police may exercise police powers to any bridge or in any tunnel owned or operated by [the Port Authority] or under its jurisdiction or control or on any of the entrance or exit plazas or approaches adjacent or appurtenant thereto. Concededly, the ABC Towing Garage premises in Fort Lee were beyond the perimeter of this jurisdictional limitation. We do not consider that the last sentence of the statute which equates the extent of the powers of Port Authority police with that of all police officers in any way expands the jurisdictional limits within which Port Authority officers may exercise such powers. [139 N.J. Super at 564]. However, the language of the first sentence of the statute does not expressly limit the arrest jurisdiction of the police to any particular area. The reference to bridges and tunnels are not specifications of the exclusive locale of any arrest, but only part of the substantive description of the offense for which an arrest may be made. And, of most significance, the last sentence of the statute bespeaks law enforcement powers within the full authority of police officers, not merely Authority police, and therefore not limited by implication to those places only where may occur routine traffic or tolls offenses in violation of Port Authority order, rule or regulation. Legislative history, as well as Authority expansion over the past half century, would seem to place severe strain upon the validity of the thesis of the motion judge and Appellate Division, not to speak of the different categories of enforcement objectives contemplated by the statutory grant of power itself. The more limited scope of the first sentence deals with violation of any order, rule or regulation of the port authority for the regulation and control of highway traffic on any bridge or in any tunnel   , factors which become irrelevant once those confines are left behind. Manifestly, traffic regulation applicable to bridge or tunnel passage is not germane to events which might occur after that passage has ended, and the traveler has emerged from such tunnel or bridge to rejoin the non-Authority community. Such a person in the general community remains subject of course to the laws of this state whose enforcement by Authority police is contemplated under the specific terms of the second sentence of the statute. The narrow limitation in the first statutory provision  to offenses occurring within tunnels, bridges, plazas and approaches  is understandable since at the time of its enactment these were the only transportation facilities operated by the Authority. See N.J.S.A. 32:1-119. But the years have broadened the functional scope of the Authority. By compact between New York and New Jersey with consent of Congress ( N.J.S.A. 32:1-1 et seq.; N.Y. Unconsol. Laws § 6401 et seq. (McKinney 1961); H.R.J. Res. 337, 67th Cong., 2d Sess., 42 Stat. 822 (1922); S.J. Res. 88, 67th Cong., 1st Sess., 42 Stat. 174 (1921)) the Authority serves not only the citizens of those states, but the nation itself. Since the birth of the Authority in 1921 and since the enactment of N.J.S.A. 32:2-25 in 1932, the Legislature has authorized the Authority, inter alia, to operate truck terminals, N.J.S.A. 32:1-141.1 (1945), bus terminals, N.J.S.A. 32:2-23.1 (1946), air terminals, N.J.S.A. 32:1-35.1 (1947), marine terminals, N.J.S.A. 32:1-35.28 (1948), railroad facilities and the World Trade Center, N.J.S.A. 32:1-35.50 (1962). Under the latter statute, the Authority, inter alia, operates the Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) system, carrying 75,000 commuters a day. This enlarged presence and function of the Authority brings into sharp focus the implications of the holdings under review. Those courts, of course, were not dealing, as such, with police power of the Authority force in the area of its many other responsibilities, such as at its airports, but rather with its impact on events occurring in the non-Authority public sector, that is to say off the actual site of its facilities but within the Port District. Nevertheless the unconditional tone of both opinions, oriented to the bridge-tunnel theme, might well be understood as applying to the broader activities of the Authority, a result wholly unrealistic and, we think, insupportable, when one considers the sensible thrust of the broad grant of power in the second sentence of the statute we discuss. We think the Legislature, in enumerating the powers of Authority police in 1932, must have visualized the future scope and potential of Port Authority function, [3] and thus meant what it said in its broad grant of police force powers. It seems of significance, too, that when the Legislature, post-1932, authorized the creation of various facilities as mentioned above (extending far beyond bridges, tunnels, plazas and approaches) it did not deem it necessary to update and restate N.J.S.A. 32:2-25. Rather, it must have assumed that the traffic control police powers once confined to tunnels and bridges, plazas and approaches were always intended to extend to added and different Authority facilities. This is apparent in the Rules and Regulations approved by the Legislature in 1951 to govern traffic in Authority air and marine terminals, which provide in part: All persons on any air terminal highway or marine terminal highway must at all times comply with any lawful order, signal or direction by voice or hand of any member of the Port Authority police force. [ N.J.S.A. 32:1-154.18(3)]. And traffic control aside, to confine the broad police powers of the second sentence of the statute to tunnels and bridges, plazas and approaches would lead to the absurd result of leaving important Authority facilities unpoliced. The Authority's power to perform police functions at Newark International Airport was implicitly acknowledged by this Court in In re Asbury-Red Bank Limousine Serv., 55 N.J. 551, 556, 557 (1970), wherein we discussed the agreement between the City of Newark and the Authority, vesting in the latter responsibility to provide police for patrolling, for guarding and for traffic control and relieving Newark of that responsibility. It is inconceivable that an Authority policeman, personally observing an armed robbery or an atrocious assault and battery being committed on the very premises of Newark International Airport, for instance, was not intended by our Legislature to have authority to interfere with the commission of such crime and to apprehend and arrest such a criminal. The bi-state Authority police force consists of approximately 1,200 members who are responsible, in practice, for law enforcement at every Port Authority facility. They are assigned and act interchangeably between the compact states. In addition to normal police functions, members of that force are called upon to discharge duties which are unique to the Authority's operations. For example, in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration's anti-hijacking program, members of the Authority police force must be assigned to security points at airports operated by the Authority. Additionally such police are charged with responsibility to investigate cargo thefts at marine and air terminals operated by the Port Authority. The narrow interpretation below of N.J.S.A. 32:2-25 would seem to create a real and unnecessary danger to public safety at all Authority installations in New Jersey, at some of which, as noted, Authority police officers provide the only police presence. The long period of legislative acceptance of the Authority police role in its broad sense, [4] as well as the continuous practice of the Authority, some of which we have mentioned, would seem to be significant under the holding of this Court in Pringle v. New Jersey Dep't of Civil Serv., 45 N.J. 329, 332-34 (1965): The principle is well established that resort may be had to long usage, contemporaneous construction and practical interpretation in construing statutes, to ascertain the meaning of technical terms, to confirm a construction deduced from the language, to explain a doubtful phrase or to ascertain the meaning of a phrase if obscurely expressed.    Furthermore, the continuous practical interpretation of the statute by the Commission over a period of years without interference by the Legislature is evidence of its conformity with the legislative intent.    More importantly, the practical construction of this statute and the acceptance thereof being of such long standing, we know of no reason why we should compel departure from it now. [Citations omitted]. In determining the full and legislatively intended scope of the second sentence of N.J.S.A. 32:2-25, the legislative attitudes and Authority practices referred to are therefore important in considering the contending viewpoints of the litigants and amicus. The defendants-movants contend of course that no police power whatever exists outside tunnel, bridge, plaza or approach  that it expires once these confines are left. And hence that it could not have existed at the garage in Fort Lee where the challenged search and arrests were made. The State contends that the powers are viable throughout the Port District above described. The Authority urges, more expansively, that the police powers statutorily intended embrace the whole of the State of New Jersey, pointing out that such is the scope of Authority police powers in New York, our sister compact state. N.Y. Crim. Pro. Law §§ 1.20, subds. 34(k), 34-a(c), 36 & § 140.10 (McKinney 1971). [5] The Authority reminds us of the desirability of a common path of judicial decision once mentioned by this Court in Moonachie v. Port of N.Y. Auth., 38 N.J. 414, 425 (1962): Since the Authority is an instrumentality of New York and New Jersey, it is eminently desirable, of course, that the path of judicial decision in the courts of the two States be a common one. It asserts that N.J.S.A. 32:2-25 tracks the language employed by the Legislature in 1921 in defining the powers of the State Police ( N.J.S.A. 53:2-1, as amended) which are statewide. It contrasts the careful legislative definition of the more limited jurisdictional powers of a municipal police force within the territorial limits of the municipality. N.J.S.A. 40A:14-152. And the State recognizes too that generally a governing body can directly exercise its police power only within its jurisdictional boundaries, absent a statute broadening those powers. 1 C. Antieau, Municipal Corporation Law §§ 5.10, 5.12 (1975). Consequently police officers can normally exercise the powers inhering in their office only within the confines of the jurisdiction which employs them. N.J.S.A. 40A:14-152; State v. Williams, 136 N.J. Super. 544, 548 (Law Div. 1975); 5 Am. Jur. 2d, Arrest § 50 (1962). [6] We conclude that the police powers described in the first sentence of the statute  to arrest on view and without warrant a violator of any order, rule or regulation of the Authority for the regulation and control of traffic on bridge, tunnel, plaza or approach  extend, by manifest legislative intent, to all other facilities now operated by the Authority. We determine further, because of the legislative intent implicit in the second, and broader, sentence of the statute, that the powers expressed therein without limitation, must have been intended to embrace not only the bridge-tunnel complex and its enlargement, that is to say all other Port Authority facilities, but the whole territorial area of the Port District itself. In this determination we are guided, inter alia, by the practical sense of the words of Justice Jacobs for this Court in Jersey City Chapter Prop. Owner's etc. Assoc. v. City Council, 55 N.J. 86, 100-01 (1969): When all is said and done, the matter of statutory construction here will not justly turn on literalisms, technisms or the so-called formal rules of interpretation; it will justly turn on the breadth of the objectives of the legislation and the commonsense of the situation. See City of Clifton v. Zweir, 36 N.J. 309, 322-323 (1962); State v. Gill, 47 N.J. 441, 445 (1966); cf. Lloyd v. Vermeulen, 22 N.J. 200, 204-206 (1956); Alexander v. N.J. Power & Light Co., 21 N.J. 373, 379 (1956).