SECTIONS 50920-50922 - California Statutes

GOVERNMENT CODE

SECTION 50920-50922

50920. As used in this article, the term "peace officer" means a
sheriff, undersheriff, deputy sheriff, marshal, or deputy marshal of
a county or city and county, or a marshal or police officer of a city
or town, employed and compensated as such, whether the members are
volunteer, partly paid, or fully paid, except those whose principal
duties are clerical, such as stenographers, telephone operators, and
other workers not engaged in law enforcement operations, or the
protection or preservation of life or property, and not under
suspension or otherwise lacking in good standing.

50921. Whenever any peace officer of a city, county, or city and
county of this state is injured, dies, or is disabled from performing
his or her duties as a peace officer by reason of engaging in the
apprehension or attempted apprehension of law violators or suspected
law violators or protection or preservation of life or property, or
the preservation of the peace anywhere in this state, including the
local jurisdiction in which he or she is employed, but is not at the
time acting under the immediate direction of his or her employer, he,
she, or his or her dependents, as the case may be, shall be accorded
by his or her employer all of the same benefits including the
benefits of the Workers' Compensation Law, which he, she, or they
would have received had that peace officer been acting under the
immediate direction of his or her employer. Any injury, disability,
or death incurred under the circumstances described in this section
shall be deemed to have arisen out of and been sustained in the
course of employment for purposes of workers' compensation and all
other benefits.

50922. Nothing in this article shall be deemed to:
(a) Require the extension of any benefits to a peace officer who
at the time of his injury, death, or disability is acting for
compensation from one other than the city, county or city and county
of his primary employment.
(b) Require the extension of any benefits to a peace officer
employed by a city, county, or city and county which by charter,
ordinance, or departmental regulation expressly prohibits the
activity giving rise to the injury, disability or death, whether now
in force or hereafter enacted or promulgated.
(c) Enlarge or extend the authority of any peace officer to make
an arrest; provided, however, that illegality of the arrest shall not
affect the extension of benefits by reason of this act if the peace
officer reasonably believed that the arrest was not illegal.