Request #2690

Garden Grove Police Department
11301 Acacia Pkwy
Garden Grove, CA 92840

Dear Records Officer,

Pursuant to the state public records law, I am a journalist requesting the records described below from your law enforcement agency. I have broken the request into two parts for your reference:

Part 1) Stolen Guns

It is our understanding that law enforcement agencies keep detailed records about firearms that were reported stolen in their jurisdictions. This information is often held in an internal crime analysis and research database such as Versadex, which can be queried for specific property.

We are therefore requesting the following for each case of reported firearm theft in your jurisdiction from Jan. 1, 2010 to the present:

-- The serial number, make, model, caliber and type of each firearm that was reported stolen
-- The address of the reported theft
-- The name of the reporting party
-- The police report number and/or incident number for the firearm theft
-- The date the theft was reported
-- Any other columns available

I would appreciate if your agency provided this information in a spreadsheet or list. If a spreadsheet or list cannot be provided, please provide copies of the police reports, incident reports, or offense reports for each case of reported firearm theft during that timeframe.

Part 2) Property and Evidence Guns

It is our understanding that law enforcement agencies maintain detailed records about firearms that were seized, confiscated, recovered, found, turned in, or otherwise came under the custody and control of the department. These guns are processed and booked into Property and Evidence and details about each are entered into a database.

We are therefore requesting a spreadsheet of every such firearm entered from Jan. 1, 2010 to the present. If a spreadsheet is not available, please provide a printout of the data or any other format of records. The data should include at least the following:

-- The serial number, make, model and type of each firearm
-- The date on which the firearm was entered
-- The police report number and/or incident number associated with each firearm
-- The type of crime or incident involving each gun (e.g., homicide, robbery, assault, etc.)
-- Any other columns available

If a spreadsheet is available for either part of this request, we respectfully ask the department to provide the record layout and/or code sheet so that we can ascertain the meaning of column labels, acronyms and abbreviations, and distinguish between firearms reported stolen and those that were seized, confiscated, recovered, found, turned in, booked into property and evidence, or otherwise came under the custody and control of the department. If a spreadsheet is not available, please provide any and all other records that will yield the information we are seeking.

I am a member of the news media, a reporter with The Trace, a 501c3 nonprofit news organization headquartered in New York City. I am making this request using MuckRock’s public records request management service, which we use to file and monitor our public records requests.

We will be making information obtained from this request available to the general public and are not requesting it for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you informed me of the total charges before completing my request.

I would prefer the requested information be sent via an e-mail attachment if available, or a mailed CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your help with this request. I look forward to receiving your response.