Appointment to the position of detective

Appointment to the position of detective
Ryff v Safir, App. Div., First Dept., 264 AD2d 349

The Ryff case sets out some standards that the Appellate Division, First Department, said should be considered in determining if a police officer who has temporarily served as a detective for at least 18 months is entitled to hold that title on a permanent basis without further examination.

Kevin T. Ryff, a New York City Police Department Harbor Unit Vessel Theft Team member, had been recommended for Detective Third Grade status by his commanding officer.

The recommendation reflected the commanding officer’s view that the duties of members of the Vessel Theft Team mirrored the investigative duties of the Detective Bureau investigators in the Auto Crime Division Special Operations Squad. Auto Crime Squad members were promoted to Detective Third Grade after 18 months of service.

New York City’s Administrative Code Section 14-103(b)(2) provides that any person who has received permanent appointment as a police officer and is temporarily assigned to perform the duties of a detective shall, whenever such assignment exceeds eighteen months in duration, be appointed as a detective and receive the compensation ordinarily paid to a detective performing such duties.*

The commissioner, however, rejected the recommendation, indicating that “the 18-month rule does not apply to the Harbor Unit Vessel Theft Team because that unit is not included in the ‘historical career path program’ it has for detective.” Ryff, however, persuaded a State Supreme Court judge to direct the commissioner to designate him a Detective Third Grade retroactive to the date he had completed 18 months of investigative service, with accompanying seniority and benefits. The Supreme Court judge ruled:

1. The commissioner “no longer has discretion to determine whether a particular assignment equals a detective function” and

2. It is the nature of the duties performed and whether they are equivalent to detective functions, not the specific unit in which they are performed, which is determinative” of whether the officer is entitled to be designated Detective Third Grade.

The Appellate Division, however, vacated the lower court’s order. Although the Supreme Court judge concluded that since Ryff “had performed “investigatory duties” for more than 18 months while with the Vessel Theft Team of the Harbor Unit, he was entitled to be designated as a Detective Third Grade with the requisite benefits,” the Appellate Division ruled that such a decision was premature. It said that a hearing was required to resolve two basic issues:

1. Does the scope of Administrative Code Section 14-103(b)(2) rest on the nature of the work performed and, if so,

2. Did Ryff’s work include “investigatory duties”?

Finding that the record was insufficient to determine whether the investigative duties actually performed by Ryff were comparable to those carried out by police officers who received detective status upon completion of 18 months of investigative duties performed in other units, the Appellate Division remanded the matter for a hearing to determine these two critical issues.**

This ruling suggests that such determinations must be made on a “case-by-case” basis and simply relying on the “official job description” will not be viewed by the courts as sufficient.

* New York State Civil Service Law Section 58.4(c), to the extent that it provided that sworn officers of municipal jurisdiction other than the City of New York were to be deemed “permanently appointed” as a detective after having temporarily served as a detective for at least 18 months, was held to violate Article 6, Section 5 [the “merit and fitness” requirement] of the State Constitution [Wood v Irving, 85 NY2d 238, 1995]. Chapter 134 of the Laws of 1997 was adopted in an effort to meet this criticism by the Court of Appeal, wherein the legislature stated “that an individual who performs in an investigatory position in a manner sufficiently satisfactory to the appropriate supervisors to hold such an assignment for a period of eighteen months, has demonstrated fitness for the position of detective or investigator within such police
or sheriffs department at least as sufficiently as could be ascertained by means of a competitive examination.”

** Ryff served as a member of the Police Department’s Harbor Unit’s Vessel Theft Team from April 4, 1995 to February 28, 1997, when he retired.
.NYPPL