§8-14-23. Repeal of conflicting acts and provisions; civil service provisions of article exclusive; status or tenure not affected; certain members automatically covered; continuance of police civil service systems.

All acts, whether general, special, local or special legislative charters, or parts thereof, in relation to any civil service measure affecting any paid police department inconsistent with the civil service provisions of this article shall be, and the same are, hereby repealed insofar as such inconsistencies shall exist. It is intended by the civil service provisions of this article to furnish a complete and exclusive system for the appointment, promotion, reinstatement, removal, discharge, suspension and reduction of all members of all paid police departments subject to the civil service provisions of this article.

The status or tenure of all members of any paid police department subject to the civil service provisions of this article, which members were employed on the effective date of this article, shall not be affected by the enactment of this article, but all such members shall be subject to all of the civil service provisions of this article with like effect as if they had been appointed members hereunder.

When a Class III city which does not have a police civil service system becomes a Class II city for which police civil service is made mandatory by the provisions of this article, all members of the paid police department of such city who were employed by such city on the effective date of the transition of such city to a Class II city and who, as of such date, have had four or more years' service as members of any paid police department (including the years any member occupied the office of chief of any such paid police department) shall be considered to have been appointed as members under the civil service provisions of this article and shall hold their positions as members in accordance therewith. All members of the paid police department of such city who do not have, as of such date, four or more years' service as members of a paid police department (including the years any member occupied the office of chief of any such paid police department) shall be subject to all examinations provided for in the civil service provisions of this article for members, except that if any such individual has sustained an injury or injuries in the line of duty while in police service, such injury or injuries shall not disqualify such individual under the medical examination required under the civil service provisions of this article.

Any police civil service system established in accordance with the provisions of former article five-a of this chapter or this article fourteen shall be or remain mandatory and shall be governed by the provisions of this article fourteen (with like effect, in the case of a Class III city or Class IV town or village, as if such Class III city or Class IV town or village were a Class I or Class II city), and shall not be affected by the transition from one class of municipal corporation to a lower class as specified in section three, article one of this chapter.