California Law Loophole Keeps Planet Fitness Peeping Tom Suspect Free

Here’s a frustrating reality of criminal law: sometimes the evidence is ironclad, the victim count is staggering, and the suspect is still walking free. That’s exactly where things stand in the Planet Fitness case out of Arroyo Grande, California, where Kyle L. Combs remains at large despite police identifying him as the person behind a brazen tanning booth surveillance operation.

According to Jeremy Burns, a spokesperson for the Arroyo Grande Police Department, the reason Combs hasn’t been arrested comes down to a technicality baked into California state law. The alleged crimes—secretly recording more than 50 people while they were partially or fully nude in tanning booths—are classified as misdemeanors. And here’s the catch: officers can only arrest someone for a misdemeanor without a warrant if they personally witness the crime happening. Surveillance video and witness statements? Not enough to make an arrest on the spot.

The mechanics of Combs’alleged operation are particularly brazen. He reportedly snuck into tanning booth rooms at the gym and hid while recording people who were distracted by their phones or wearing earbuds. The tanning booth’s larger room layout apparently gave him cover to conceal himself. It’s the kind of calculated predation that leaves investigators frustrated—they have the goods, but the law won’t let them move forward without prosecutorial approval first.

Since the charges don’t rise to felony level, the Arroyo Grande PD has had to hand the case off to the district attorney and wait for a charging decision before they can bring Combs in. That waiting period leaves him free to continue his daily life, a reality that highlights a troubling gap in how California’s criminal justice system handles sex crimes below the felony threshold. The victims know who targeted them. The police know who did it. But the system’s machinery grinds slowly, and in the meantime, the suspect remains out on the street.

What makes this particularly galling is the scale—police say Combs allegedly recorded over 50 people. That’s not a single lapse in judgment; that’s a pattern of predatory behavior. Yet the law treats it as a series of misdemeanors rather than something that warrants immediate intervention. It raises hard questions about whether California’s charging structure actually serves the people it’s supposed to protect.