Police Pension Bd. of City of Phoenix v. Warren

• Decision Date: 03 February 1965
• Docket Number: No. 7984,7984
• Citation: 97 Ariz. 180,398 P.2d 892
• Parties: POLICE PENSION BOARD OF the CITY OF PHOENIX, Robert Knox, Chairman of the Police Pension Board, and Stanton S. von Grabill, Ex Officio Secretary of the Board, Appellants, v. Lillian WARREN, Appellee.
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

Page 892

398 P.2d 892

97 Ariz. 180

POLICE PENSION BOARD OF the CITY OF PHOENIX, Robert Knox, Chairman of the Police Pension Board, and Stanton S. von Grabill, Ex Officio Secretary of the Board, Appellants, v. Lillian WARREN, Appellee.

No. 7984.

Supreme Court of Arizona, In Banc.

Feb. 3, 1965.

Rehearing Denied March 9, 1965.

Merle L. Hanson, City Atty., and James D. Lester, Asst. City Atty., Phoenix, for appellants.

Gibbons, Kinney & Tipton, Phoenix, for appellee.

John C. Hughes and Coit I. Hughes, Phoenix, and Kenneth Sperry, Long Beach, Cal., of counsel, for Phoenix Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, amici curiae.

Healy, Laubscher & Dickerson, Tucson, for Police Pension Bd. for the City of Tucson, amici curiae.

J. LaMar Shelley, Mesa, for The League of Arizona Cities and Towns and Its Member Municipalities, amici curiae.

STRUCKMEYER, Vice Chief Justice.

This is an application by Lillian M. Warren for writ of mandamus to compel the Police Pension Board of the City of Phoenix to grant her a pension. The lower court ordered that the writ issue and the Police Pension Board of the City of Phoenix and its members appealed.

Appellee had, prior to May 14, 1942, been employed by the City of Phoenix in its Water Department. On that day, at her request, she was transferred from the Water Department to the Police Department and continued as an employee in the Police Department until she left the service of the City on November 15, 1962. Her duties were clerical and secretarial in that she served as secretary to the Chief of Police and was responsible for the preparation and computation of the department payroll and annual budget. She was not sworn as a police officer nor did she perform police duties in the commonly accepted sense of police work; that is, the protection of life and property, the investigation of crimes, or the apprehension of criminals. She did not contribute five per cent of her salary to the police pension fund as is required by A.R.S. § 9-923, but she did contribute a percentage of her salary for Social Security and to the General Employees' Retirement Fund provided for all city employees by A.R.S. § 38-752 et seq. After her employment terminated, she applied to the Police Pension Board of the City of Phoenix for a pension, which application was denied. Appellee then brought this action in mandamus in the Superior Court of Maricopa County.

The Arizona statute, A.R.S. § 9-925, subs. A, as re-enacted in 1952 is in substantially the same language as originally enacted in 1937:

'Any member of the police department whose membership began prior to July 1, 1952 and who serves such department twenty (20) years in the aggregate may, upon application be retired, and shall be paid, during his lifetime, a monthly pension equal to fifty (50) per cent of the average monthly compensation received by him during the period of five (5) years immediately prior to the date of application for retirement. * * *' Ch. 93, Second Regular Session, § 16-1808(b), Laws of 1952.

A.R.S. § 9-911, in its pertinent part, provides:

'* * * unless the context otherwise requires:

* * *

* * *

'6. 'Member' or 'member of the department' means a member of the police department, and includes all ranks and both sexes.'

Appellants urge, in effect, that the phrase 'member of the police department' as used in § 9-925 means those who were sworn as police officers and whose responsibilities embrace the duties common to peace officers everywhere. Appellee seeks to give to the phrase 'member of the police department' a literal significance so as to include those employees who work in the proximity of or assist the police force of the City of Phoenix in the Police Department.

The definition of 'member of the department' set forth supra in A.R.S. § 9-911, subs. 6, is plainly tautological. It does, however, provide one guide which we feel has some considerable significance in discerning legislative intent. It includes all ranks of both sexes as members of the department. Webster defines rank as '[g]rade or official standing, as in the army, navy, or nobility; * * *.' Webster's Second New International Dictionary. As applicable to a police force, rank is commonly understood to mean patrolman, sergeant, detective, captain, etc. as a clerk or secretary appellee did not hold rank in the Police Department of the City of Phoenix. Nor does appellee contend that she held any rank. There is thus a strong supposition that appellee's interpretation does not coincide with the legislative intended meaning of the phrase 'member of the police department.'

Appellee states, as a predicate for her argument, that 'plaintiff has been employed by the Phoenix Police Department for twenty (20) years, and has been paid from the Police Department Budget.' The misconceptions implicit in these statements are fundamental and require some comment. Appellee was not employed by the Phoenix Police Department. She was employed by the City and assigned to work in the Police Department as a classified city employee subject to transfer to another department pursuant to the rules promulgated by the Civil Service Board of Phoenix, see e. g. Rule IV, § 11(a), Rules of the Civil Service Board, City of Phoenix, 1938, and Rule 12, a and b, Personnel Rules, City of Phoenix, 1955. Doubt of the soundness of appellee's position is prompted if we consider that should appellee have been transferred prior to working twenty years in the Police Department she could not have thereafter established any valid claim for retirement under the Police Pension Act.

Moreover, that appellee was paid from the Police Department budget affords no clue as to the intention of the legislature in enacting the police pension statutes. Whom the City of Phoenix includes in the department's budget pursuant to administrative policy can shed no possible light as to whom the legislature intended to include in the phrase 'member of the police department.' Legislative intent cannot be determined from the varying adminstrative policies of the different city governments in Arizona or by the inclusion or exclusion of various employees in different cities in the respective police departments. Conceivably, for example, Phoenix might carry police vehicle maintenance employees on the Police Department payroll or in its department budget whereas another city might establish a Maintenance Department for all city vehicles and the employees who serviced police vehicles carried there, or a city might change its administrative policy and at different times carry the same employee in different departments.

Much of the problem arising in this case may be attributed to the use of the word 'department' in § 9-925, subs. A, supra. Department is defined by Webster as '[a] division or branch of governmental administration, national or municipal; as, the health, water, or street department of a city; * * *.' Webster's Second New International Dictionary. Obviously, a department may be as inclusive or exclusive of personnel as the establishing municipal authority chooses to decree. Insofar as a police department is concerned, it might or might not include those indirectly or incidentally concerned in police affairs; as for example, those employed to wash police vehicles. If appellee's position is correct, potentially many other city employees may seriously claim to have acquired rights under the Police Pension Act. Such a result is patently absurd. Courts will not place upon a statute a construction which will result in an absurd consequence. State Board of Dispensing Opticians v. Schwab, 93 Ariz. 328, 380 P.2d 784; Local 266, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, A. F. of L. v. Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, 78 Ariz. 30, 275 P.2d 393. We do not believe the legislature has used the word 'department' in the same broad sense that appellee seeks to give to it.

Since we conclude that it is unlikely the legislature intended to pension all employees who might be included for administrative purposes by a city as a department, the question then becomes who were intended to be pensioned. The act is entitled 'Police Pension Act of 1937'. In determining the extent and operation of an act, a court must consider not only the law itself but also its title. In re Twenty-One Slot Machines, 72 Ariz. 408, 236 P.2d 733; Maricopa County v. Douglas, 69 Ariz. 35, 208 P.2d 646; Garrison v. Luke, 52 Ariz. 50, 78 P.2d 1120. The fair inference here from the title is that the act concerns itself with the pensioning of those who are commonly understood to be police.

Black's Law Dictionary, Third Edition, defines police as 'the function of that branch of the administrative machinery of government which is charged with the preservation of public order and tranquility, the promotion of the public health, safety, and morals, and the prevention, detection, and punishment of crimes.' The word police is particularly applied to those who are appointed for the purpose of the maintenance of public tranquility among the citizens, State ex rel. Walsh v. Hine, 59 Conn. 50, 21 A. 1024, 10 L.R.A. 83. Indeed, it has been said, 'The term 'police' as commonly understood, 'is so plain and unambiguous that there is no occasion for resorting to rules of statutory interpretation, * * *'.' Wyndham v. United States, D.C., 197 F.Supp. 856. The meaning of the word 'police', as would normally be understood from the title of the act, implies a like meaning in the use by the legislature in the phrase 'member of the police department.' 'Police' is an adjective modifying 'department' and restricts 'department' to that category or division of individuals charged with the preservation of public order and tranquility and the prevention, detection and punishment of crimes.

In determining legislative intent that which is necessarily implied in a statute is am much a part of it as that expressed and the purpose to be accomplished is...