174 N.Y. 526 | NY | 1903
These three cases are substantially identical in their facts, and the appeals present the same question as was involved inMatter of Sugden, just decided (
When the petitioners were assigned to the detective bureau the office that they held was that of policemen. They did not cease to hold that office upon their assignment, nor were they appointed to any other office, since, if they were, it would follow that they would then hold two offices, that of policeman and detective sergeant. They still continued to hold the office to which they originally had been appointed by the local authorities. All that the statute in question accomplished was to direct or require the commissioner to maintain a bureau for some special service or police duty. The assignment of the petitioners to that duty, in obedience to the act, was not the creation of any other office than the one they already held, nor the appointment to any other office. It was simply a provision for maintaining a bureau in the police department for special service, and the fact that this bureau was to be formed from members of the force designated by classes, and to be called detective sergeants, does not bring the statute in conflict with the Constitution.
The orders of the Appellate Division and those of the Special Term should be reversed, and the prayer of the petitioners should be granted, with costs.
PARKER, Ch. J. (and GRAY, HAIGHT, MARTIN, VANN and WERNER, JJ., in result) concur.
Orders reversed, etc.