Court Opinion

ID: 9719055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:41:37.708551+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:04.339476
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, J.,
dissenting.
¶ 1 I respectfully dissent. The Majority holds that “where a [Port Authority] officer is properly traveling from one PAT property to another, in pursuit of railroad, railway, or transportation business, the officer has statutory authority to arrest under our criminal and motor vehicle laws.” Majority Slip Op. at 10-11. In my opinion, this pronouncement ignores plain language in the Railroad and Street Police Act (the Act) that limits the circumstances under which a Port Authority officer may conduct an arrest, and as a result, invests Port Authority officers with powers denied by the legislature. Because the trial court interpreted the powers of the Port Authority police in accordance with the limitations mandated by the Act, I would affirm the court’s order granting suppression of the evidence.
¶2 Judicial review of statutory enactments is governed, fundamentally, by the Statutory Construction Act, 1 Pa.C.S. §§ 1901-1991. “The object of all interpretation and construction of statutes is to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the General Assembly. Every statute shall be construed, if possible, to give effect to all its provisions.” 1 Pa.C.S. § 1921(a) (emphasis added). In the Railroad and Street Police Act, 22 Pa.C.S. §§ 3301-3305, the General Assembly included a provision that quite deliberately limits the legal capacity of a Port Authority officer to conduct an arrest off Port Authority property. See 22 Pa.C.S. § 3303(a). That provision, section 3303(a) contains language largely ignored by the Majority that conditions a Port Authority officer’s exercise of police powers on the nature of the duties to which he applies them. Section 3303(a) states the following:
§ 3303. Powers and duties
(a) General powers. — Railroad and street railway policemen shall severally possess and exercise all the powers of a police officer in the City of Philadelphia, in and upon, and in the immediate and adjacent vicinity of, the property of the corporate authority or elsewhere within this Commonwealth while engaged in the discharge of their duties in pursuit of railroad, street railway or transportation system business.
22 Pa.C.S. § 3303 (emphasis added).
¶ 3 Section 3303(a), when considered in its entirety and interpreted in accordance with the plain meaning of the language, can be read only as a specific limitation of the powers accorded by the legislature to Port Authority officers. The phrase “while engaged in the discharge of their duties,” critical to any consideration of this section, recognizes that an officer’s discharge of specific duties consistent with the business of the Port Authority is a prerequisite to his exercise of any of the powers otherwise provided by the Act. This conditional nature of the officer’s powers is established by the legislature’s use of the conjunction “while” in relation to the noun “discharge.” See WEBSTER’S NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY 1325 (1979) (defining the conjunction “while” as “during the time that,” and the noun “discharge” as “the act of removing an obligation or liability”). The plain meaning of these two words allows a Port Authority officer to exercise lawful powers during the time that he acts to remove the obligation or liability imposed by his duties. By virtue of the same language, *304the Act establishes that if the officer’s conduct is not motivated by the need to remove his obligation to the Port Authority or is not carried out during the appropriate timeframe, it is not in accordance with the Railroad and Street Police Act.
¶4 The scope of the obligation in the discharge of which a Port Authority officer may exercise the authority provided by the Act is described by section 3303(a) as merely “duties in pursuit of [Port Authority] business.” Although this provision provides no precise definition for “duties,” it makes readily apparent a limitation in scope. The duties of the officer are, perforce, limited by the business of the Port Authority itself.
¶ 5 The nature of Port Authority “business,” in pursuit of which the officer’s powers must be exercised, is well defined by the Second Class County Port Authority Act, 55 P.S. §§ 551-563.5. The act describes, with exhaustive care, the “rights or powers” of the Port Authority, including specifically the manner of “business” in which it may engage. See 55 P.S. § 553. In none of section 553’s twenty-seven subsections, has the legislature vested the Authority with the power to patrol public roadways not operated as high occupancy vehicle lanes. Indeed, even the Port Authority’s use of such lanes for purposes of mass transit is subject to prior approval by county government. See 55 P.S. §§ 553(20), 563.1. Although section 553(15) provides the Port Authority with discretion “[t]o do all acts and things necessary for ... the general welfare of the authority to carry out the powers granted to it by this act or any other acts[,]” 55 P.S. § 553(15), neither this section nor the provisions of the Railway and Street Police Act suggest that the Port Authority’s exercise of police powers on public roadways is “necessary.” Indeed, without some demonstrated relationship between the exercise of such expansive powers and the welfare of the Port Authority, I find it pointedly unnecessary.
¶ 6 This very point is implicit in our decision in Commonwealth v. Mundorf. See 699 A.2d 1299, 1301 (Pa.Super.1997). In Mundorf, we concluded that a cognizable “discharge of duty” should allow PAT officers to exercise their powers only “to prevent an immediate threat to the welfare of PAT passengers or property.” See id. Although the language the Court used in Mundorf is not included on the face of the Act, it recognizes inherently that the only duties subject to discharge by a Port Authority officer are those “necessary” to the welfare of the Authority and the passengers with whose welfare the Authority is charged. Id. at 1302 (“[I]t is only under facts similar to those in the instant case, where the officer is on routine patrol and acts to prevent an immediate threat to the welfare of PAT passengers and property, that we will validate an arrest conducted pursuant to the second provision of section 3303(a).”).
¶ 7 Notwithstanding the evident care and restraint the Court exercised in Mun-dorf, the Majority disavows its rationale in what I can only conclude is unfettered zeal to avoid a “bad result” in the case before us. Seeking to circumvent the potential that one who breaks the law might not be punished, the Majority circumvents the law, disregarding limitations on the powers of the Port Authority’s officers mandated by the limited “rights and powers” of the Port Authority itself. See 55 P.S. § 553. Its holding, that the arresting officer’s mere presence on a public roadway while driving between two Port Authority properties miles apart is a sufficient basis upon which to validate his exercise of arrest powers, is grievously overbroad. In my opinion, such a holding is tantamount to investiture of arrest powers in the Port *305Authority to act virtually anywhere in Allegheny County without regard to the specific purpose for which any given arrest is to be made. Such a grant of authority is neither sanctioned nor suggested by the language of the Railway and Street Police Act. Unless “[Port Authority] business” may be held to include general patrol of public roadways, which the record in this case clearly contravenes, the Majority’s holding is without support in the enabling legislation and I conclude, infirm. N.T. Suppression Motion, 2/16/00, at 6 (testimony of arresting officer that he does not have authority generally to enforce provisions of Motor Vehicle Code on public roadways).
¶ 8 Moreover, the Majority’s investiture of such wide ranging powers in a “special” police force like that of the Port Authority is pointedly inconsistent with our interpretation of enabling legislation empowering similar law enforcement bodies. In Commonwealth v. Carlson, 705 A.2d 468, 471 (Pa.Super.1998), upon which the Majority relies for support, we recognized the paramount importance of “scope of employment” language used by the General Assembly to constrain the powers of wildlife conservation officers. See 705 A.2d 468, 471 (Pa.Super.1998). In that case, an officer arrested a motorist, as in this case, for DUI. See id. at 468. We concluded that the offense of DUI was included amongst those for which the officer could arrest, citing language from the Pennsylvania Game and Wildlife Code allowing officers to “pursue, apprehend or arrest any individual suspected of any ... offense classified as a misdemeanor or felony.” See id. at 469 (quoting 34 Pa.C.S. 901(a)). Nonetheless, we invalidated the arrest in Carlson based on language in the Code that premised the officer’s power to arrest on the requirement that the officer act “within the scope of [his] employment.” See id. We concluded that the presence of such language focused and limited the officer’s authority relative to the conduct of specific duties.
Significantly rather than simply imbuing wildlife conservation officers with the power to arrest at any time, the language “when acting within the scope of the officer’s employment” was chosen to define when they are permitted to act. Additionally, the legislature did not use broader and more permissive language such as “any time the officer is on duty.” Had the legislature used such language, [the officer] likely would have been authorized to effect this arrest because he was on duty at the time he first observed Appellant’s driving. However, the statute does not appear to contem- • plate a wildlife conservation officer pursuing or arresting an individual when the reasonable suspicion or probable cause to suspect a violation of the law occurs when the officer is acting outside the scope of his primary duties.
Section 901 indicates that the primary duty of a wildlife conservation officer is to enforce the Game and Wildlife Code. No provision within the Game and Wildlife Code would require a wildlife conservation officer to generally patrol the highways and byways of this Commonwealth to enforce our criminal laws and Vehicle Code. Indeed, if the scope of a Wildlife conservation officer’s employment encompassed such a duty, then the limiting language of subsection 901(a)(17) would be superfluous.
Id. at 471, 472.
¶ 9 Significantly, we found the provision of the Game and Wildlife Code at issue in Carlson analogous to the “discharge of duties” language of the Rahway and Street Police Act at issue here. See id. at 472. Because the officer in Carlson was not *306engaged in the discharge of his specific obligation to the Game Commission when he effected the arrest, we concluded that he acted outside his legal authority and ordered suppression of evidence of intoxication gathered by way of the arrest. See id. at 473.
¶ 10 I can only conclude that the same result, solidly premised on the “discharge of duties” language of the Act, is properly mandated in the case before us. As in Carlson, the Act provides no allowance for Port Authority officers to “generally patrol the highways and byways of this Commonwealth to enforce our criminal laws and Vehicle Code.” Id. The Majority’s apparent insertion of such powers finds no support in the language of the legislature and, in point of fact, renders the “discharge of duties” language superfluous. Because the Majority declines to apply the Act with specific recognition of this language, I find its disposition untenable. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.