Adams v. Selectmen of Town of Northbridge

• Decision Date: 16 October 1925
• Citation: 253 Mass. 408,149 N.E. 152
• Parties: ADAMS et al. v. SELECTMEN OF TOWN OF NORTHBRIDGE et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

253 Mass. 408

149 N.E. 152

ADAMS et al.

v.SELECTMEN OF TOWN OF NORTHBRIDGE et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Oct. 16, 1925.

Appeal from Superior Court, Worcester County.

Taxpayers' suit by Arnold Adams and others against the Selectmen of the Town of Northbridge and others to have decreed that the Town has no legally established police department, and to restrain treasurer thereof from using town funds to pay expenses of alleged department. From a decree sustaining demurrer to and dismissing bill, plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

F. W. Morrison, of Worcester, for appellants.

E. H. Vaughan, of Worcester (H. W. Brown, of Boston, on the brief), for appellees.

RUGG, C. J.

This is a suit brought by ten taxpayers of the town of Northbridge against the selectmen and town treasurer of that town and others under G. L. c. 40, § 53. The allegations of the bill in substance and effect act that the selectmen are maintaining a police force, appointing and paying a chief of police, and proposing other expenditures in connection with such police force, all contrary to law. The prayers of the bill are to restrain further expenditures of that kind.

Allegations and prayers respecting expenditures made in years prior to 1925 need not be considered. Fuller v. Trustees of Deerfield Academy, 252 Mass. 258, 147 N. E. 878. They can stand on no better footing as to alleged illegality than the allegations respecting the current year.

The town of Northbridge has never accepted St. 1920, c. 591, §§ 22-26, nor of G. L. c. 41, § 97. Express enactment there is made to the effect that in towns which accept that law there shall be a police department established under the direction of the selectmen with a chief of police. There are other enabling and mandatory provisions. These statutes, however, do not repeal the general authority conferred upon selectmen by G. L. c. 41, § 96, to appoint police officers. That section in substance was enacted by St. 1851, c. 162, and has been retained in all subsequent revisions of the statutes. This general authority imports power to appoint some one police officer to be in charge of the others and to direct them in the performance of their duties, when advisable, in view of local conditions, and when such course has the express or implied approval of the town. It would be too narrow a construction of section 93 to hold that no police officer could be appointed by the selectmen to exercise the functions of a chief of police, that each police officer must be wholly independent of supervision by any of his fellows, or that the selectmen alone can exercise such supervision. The selectmen, in the absence of statute and in the performance of their general duties, may organize those appointed police officers by them into a convenient and efficient working force. See Ducey v. Brunell, 250 Mass. 114, 116, 145 N. E. 37. Police officers are public officers for whose acts in the performance of duty the municipality is not liable. Bolster v. Lawrence, 225 Mass. 387, 389, 114 N. E. 722, L. R. A. 1917B, 1285. But that principle does not prevent the systemization and supervision of their work in order to...