In California, is there a telephone law against harassment?
So lately, I have been randomly receiving telephone calls at 6: 30 in the morning, usually resulting in a hang up on the other end. This has been going on for a couple of months and I would like to know is there a law that first prohibits them from calling that early and secondly, if I have asked them to not call me, yet they still do. Are there protection laws against that?
Answer:
Golly darn be you, John S, for always taking all of the questions I know the answer to and answering them without giving anybody else a chance to do so first. Go pick up a case load of pro bonos to keep yourself occupied for awhile will ya! Just kidding, I'm a big fan. ;-p
But since simply having knowledge of the laws does not prevent the innocent from falling victim to the criminals, no matter what the Legislature says they think, I will elaborate by telling my story. :-)
Being that the phone numbers were unidentifiable by regular means I could not determine whether or not they were completely random. I contacted the local telephone company to initiate a malicious call trace. They did so for a small fee but I believe they would have waived this if I had only filed for the police report in the first instance. I found out that this was no random incident and that all the telephone calls that I'd received originated from the same number, a number that I would not be privy to because here in California we are so big on personal privacy. (See California Constitution, article I, section 1; Code of Civil Procedure section 1985.3; Civil Code section 1798, et seq.; Government Code section 6254(c).)
I would have to file a police report so the local telephone company would send the report of the malicious call trace to the police department. Being that there is much bigger fish in my urban county I experienced some hesitation on the part of the police department. But perhaps you reside in a rural county and this will be the crime of the week. An Officer suggested that the calls were just random and implied that I was wasting valuable government expenditures. (That's funny because I thought I paid taxes, I didn't say that as I'm sure they get it all the time.) Instead I explained to him that the telephone company already made a report that I was not receiving random calls but needed the police to clear the privacy issue.
The Officer took my statement and upon receiving the malicious call trace he suggested that it was just a wrong number and not an intentional annoyance but I persisted. He called the number, got the answering machine, and left a message. The calls ceased immediately and I never had to press misdemeanor charges for a violation of Penal Code section 653m subdivision (b). This process would have likely proved to be more annoying then the calls itself had I been required to appear and testify as to the accuracy of the information in the report.
I may have been particularly fortunate that the line on the other end was also in California and probably located near enough to fear the police. But what happens if the calls are being received from lets say Nevada? We are still close enough to be intimidated by the perpetrator but far enough away that we cannot pursue are protections... John S?
"I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away." n1
"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all." n2
“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.” n3
Thomas Jefferson
*/End of Line.
Making repeated telephone calls with intent to annoy is a violation of Penal Code section 653m, subdivision (b). It is a misdemeanor with a six month maximum jail term.
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