Court Opinion

ID: 9576515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:25:24.225853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:09:23.247467
License: Public Domain

Neely, Justice,

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding in syllabus point 2 as I believe that the requirement that applicants for the position of police officer have been residents of the municipality for one year before their application for employment is eminently reasonable. Oddly enough, the authority cited by the majority supports my conclusion. Police officers must understand the community they serve both geographically and psychologically. See Town of Milton v. Civil Service Commission, 365 Mass. 368, 312 N.E.2d 188 (1974). When the radio dispatcher calls all units to inform them of an armed robbery in progress at Krogers in Kanawha City and the patrolman responds with “Where’s that at?” it is then too late to educate police officers about the lay-out of the city. It would be unfortunate indeed if a city police officer in West Virginia knew less about his city than the felon he is assigned to apprehend.
I do not cavil for a moment with the proposition that the right to travel is a fundamental constitutional right and that before it can be infringed, a compelling state interest must be served. However, public employment, contrary to popular opinion, is not welfare, Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), nor is it controlled by the same principles as voting, Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 92 S.Ct. 995, 31 *778L.Ed.2d 274 (1972), or medical services, Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U.S. 250, 94 S.Ct. 1076, 39 L.Ed.2d 306 (1974); a person may have a right to travel and not starve in the process but he does not have a right to work for the City of Charleston. Not only does the residency requirement serve to insure a police force knowledgeable about the community, it also helps preserve the community itself.
Unfortunately, government is one of West Virginia’s few growth industries and, because it offers clean, healthy, interesting, and secure work, it is rapidly becoming not just the employer of last resort; it is as well the employer of first resort. Parents are separated from their children, siblings from one another, and lifelong friends from each other because of the need to find work elsewhere in other states; therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to me that government jobs should be for people who live in the area where the government governs because it is their friends and families who pay the taxes. Such a rule, ethnocentric though it may be, has the salutary effect of keeping families together and helping to reduce the penury and hopelessness of the old who want their children among them. It is time that this Court took into consideration' the plight of the little man who, among other simple requests, would like to know that he will not die alone, separated from his children so that some out-of-stater who has never suffered for West Virginia can suck what little cream there is from a very small bottle of milk.-