| OCR Text |
Show the state of Utah. Further, the law prohibits the use of obscene, lewd or profane language; any threat of harm to the persons or property of the household called; and any disturbing of the peace or of the right of privacy in that household, whether or not conversation ensues. False statements regarding injury, death or other activities activi-ties of the household called; or any attempts to terrify, intimidate, intimi-date, harass or annoy are also prohibited. A first violation, of the law constitutes a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $299 fine and six months in jail. Subsequent violations are regarded re-garded as a felony, with the offender subject to imprisonment imprison-ment in the state prison for up to three years, and a fine up to $1,000. OBSCENE PHONE CALLERS NOW FACE STATE PROSECUTION Gov. Calvin L. Rampton has signed into law a bill passed by the current Legislature making it unlawful to use the telephone for the purpose of harassing, intimidating, terrifying terri-fying or otherwise offending another person. By passing this bill, Utah joins an increasing number of states which have enacted legislation leg-islation to prohibit the use of the telephone for annoyance calls. Most recently both Idaho and Arizona have passed similar sim-ilar laws. Gerald E. Vickers, Beaver' County manager for Mountain States Telephone, described the new law as "extremely helpful help-ful in protecting our customers custom-ers from the harassment and fear of 'sick' telephone calls.'' Though the telephone company com-pany has been highly successful success-ful in using modern electronic equipment to identify offenders, offend-ers, law enforcement agencies have been severely hampered in the past. Prior to the passage pass-age of the new state law, only municipal ordinances specifically specifi-cally prohibited the annoyance calls. The bill expressly states that a person is in violation of this law if the annoyance call is either made or reecived within |
