SECTION 1. In this act, all terms shall have the same meaning as those terms defined in section 1 of chapter thirty-one of the General Laws.

SECTION 2. Notwithstanding section 26 of chapter thirty-one of the General Laws or any other general or special law to the contrary, when the administrator creates eligible fists for original appointment to the position of police officer in the city of Boston pursuant to chapter thirty-one of the General Laws, the names of persons who pass examinations for original appointment to a position of police officer in the city of Boston shall be placed on the eligible list in the following order: (1) disabled veterans, in the order of their respective standings; (2) veterans, in the order of their respective standings; (3) widows or widowed mothers of veterans who were killed in action or died from a service connected disability incurred in wartime service, in the order of their respective standings; (4) persons who graduated from any public or private secondary school located in Boston or from any public secondary school as participants in the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) program, and who were Boston residents at the time of graduation from high school, in the order of their respective standings; (5) all others, in the order of their respective standings.

The administrator may require an applicant to provide information, in a form deemed sufficient by the administrator, to demonstrate the school from which that applicant graduated and whether the applicant was a Boston resident at that time.

Nothing in this act shall amend, inodify, or repeal the Boston Police Commissioner's authority under St. 1978, c. 174, as amended, to appoint individuals to the police force in the city of Boston from the cadet program without certification from an eligible list prepared under chapter thirty-one of the General Laws. In addition, where the Boston Police Commissioner has provided the administrator with the written request allowed by section 58 of chapter thirty-one of the General Laws, the administrator shall, when certifying names from said eligible list for original appointment to the police force for the city of Boston, continue to place the names of all persons who have resided in said city or town for three (3) continuous years immediately prior to the date of that person's respective Civil Service Examination ahead of the name of any person who has not so resided.

SECTION 3. This act shall take effect upon its passage.