Cal. PEN § 636.5

This is the official text of Cal. PEN § 636.5, part of California’s Penal Code — defines crimes and sets criminal procedure in California.

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Official statutory text

Any person not authorized by the sender, who intercepts any public safety radio service communication, by use of a scanner or any other means, for the purpose of using that communication to assist in the commission of a criminal offense or to avoid or escape arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment or who divulges to any person he or she knows to be a suspect in the commission of any criminal offense, the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect or meaning of that communication concerning the offense with the intent that the suspect may avoid or escape from arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Nothing in this section shall preclude prosecution of any person under Section 31 or 32.

As used in this section, “public safety radio service communication” means a communication authorized by the Federal Communications Commission to be transmitted by a station in the public safety radio service.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.