Court Opinion

ID: 9541359
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:24:47.524085+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:47.097836
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J. (dissenting).
I dissent because I accept defendants’ argument, rejected by the majority in its footnote 5 (at 649), that the only statutory authorization for the police force now called the “DEP police” is contained in a 1906 enactment that became obsolete long ago.
The 1906 statute, now codified as New York City Administrative Code § 24-355, provides in relevant part:
“It shall be the duty of the board of water supply of the city of New York, to provide proper police protection to the inhabitants of the localities in which any work may be constructed under the authority of this act [L 1905, ch 724] and during the period of • construction, against the acts or omissions of persons employed on such works or found in the neighborhood thereof; and to that end the said board is hereby authorized and required to appoint a sufficient number of persons to adequately police the said localities for the said periods. . . . The said board shall give to each person so appointed a certificate of appointment and certified copies thereof, one *651of which shall be filed in the office of the sheriff of each county in which any work shall be in process of construction under this act and in which said person shall be authorized to perform his duties. Each of said persons so appointed shall be and have all the powers of a peace officer in the county where any work is being constructed under the authority of this act.... The sheriff of a county wherein a certificate of appointment of any such person as a peace officer is filed may cancel such certificate for cause, and shall immediately give notice in writing of such cancellation to the board of water supply of the city of New York, specifying the cause of such revocation. . . . On such cancellation the authority of such person as a peace officer shall immediately cease.” (L 1906, ch 314, § 6 [emphasis added].)
Thus the original authorization was only for the period of construction of water supply facilities, and required that certificates of appointment be filed with the sheriff of each affected county, who could cancel any certificate “for cause.” It is undisputed that the construction has been complete for many decades, and that no certificates of appointment are on file.
There has never been another statutory authorization. None of the three statutes cited by the majority in its footnote 5 authorizes the employment of New York City police in the watershed area. As to two of them, no argument is or can be made that they authorize anything of the kind. Chapter 929, § 1 of the Laws of 1937 (enacting Administrative Code of City of NY § 734[1]-1.0), quoted by the majority (majority op at 645), provides that what is now the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) shall “preserve the purity of . . . waters . . . and . . . protect [the water] supply and the lands adjacent thereto from injury or nuisance.” It makes no mention of a police force. Chapter 599 óf the Laws of 2000 amended Criminal Procedure Law § 1.20 (34) (o) in a way not relevant here.
Indeed, it is undisputed that, from whenever construction of the “works” referred to in the 1906 act was finished until 1983, no statutory authorization for what is now called the DEP police existed. The force created in 1906 continued to function, and I have no doubt that the people who served on it were—as the DEP police still are—performing important public duties in complete good faith. Legally, however, when they acted outside New York City they were civilians; they had no authority to act as police officers.
*652The People argue here that the force was effectively revived in 1983, when a section referring to “the water-supply police employed by the city of New York” was added to the definition of “police officer” in the Criminal Procedure Law. The new section, CPL 1.20 (34) (o) included within the definition:
“A sworn officer of the water-supply police employed by the city of New York and acting outside said city, appointed to protect the sources, works, and transmission of water supplied to the city of New York, and to protect persons on or in the vicinity of such water sources.”
I think it is plain from the text of the statute and its legislative history, however, that the 1983 Legislature did not think it was either creating a new police force or reviving an old one; it was only giving “police officer” status to members of a force that it believed—mistakenly—already existed.
On its face, the statute merely defines a term. It does not purport to create a police force. It specifies the category, “police officer” rather than “peace officer” or something else, to which members of a certain force shall belong—a force that, the Legislature wrongly assumed, was already in existence. The legislative history makes even clearer that the Legislature did not think it was authorizing a police force. The Assembly memorandum in support of the legislation says:
“this bill would clarify that a sworn officer of the Water-Supply police employed by the City of New York and acting outside New York City [is] a police officer having been so designated in 1905 but inadvertently omitted from the peace-officer 1980 recodification provisions of the CPL” (Assembly Mem in Support of 1983 NY Assembly Bill 5782-A, Bill Jacket, L 1983, ch 969 [emphasis added]).
I think the majority—for understandable reasons—is reading the 1983 legislation as though it were sufficient to make the Legislature’s mistaken assumption come true—i.e., to do what the Legisláture probably would and should have done, if it had been correctly informed. I sympathize with the majority’s wish to accomplish a common-sense result, and if this case involved something other than the authorization of a police force—if the public employees involved were, say, lawyers or bus drivers—I might be prepared to go along. But I am unwilling to hold that some citizens have become police, with the power to use force to *653deprive other citizens of their liberty, until and unless the Legislature has unmistakably expressed an intention to confer that power on them. I would thus hold that the gap in the law that these cases have brought to light can be repaired only by new legislation.
I agree with the courts below that there was no statute permitting the officers who issued the speeding tickets in these cases to act as police officers in the watershed, and I would therefore affirm the dismissal of the simplified traffic informations.
Judges G.B. Smith, Ciparick and Read concur with Judge Graffeo; Chief Judge Kaye dissents in a separate opinion; Judge R.S. Smith dissents and votes to affirm in another opinion in which Judge Rosenblatt concurs.
In each case: Order reversed, etc.