Attorney General Bonta Announces Over $4.9 Million in Grant Funding Awarded to 10 Sheriff’s Departments to Help Seize Weapons from Prohibited Persons

OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced the California Department of Justice (DOJ) has awarded over $4.9 million to 10 county sheriff’s departments to support activities related to seizing weapons and ammunition from individuals prohibited from possessing them. The sheriffs of Contra Costa, Lake, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Ventura counties applied for and will receive grant funding through DOJ’s Gun Violence Reduction Program. 

“The California Department of Justice’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System, or APPS, is still the only one of its kind nationwide, and it is used each day to monitor and retrieve firearms from the hands of individuals no longer legally allowed to possess them,” said Attorney General Bonta. “The APPS enforcement work we do at DOJ can only be strengthened through closer partnership with local law enforcement. I commend all of the sheriffs for applying for grant funding to help disarm potentially dangerous people, and keep Californians safe.”

When it was deployed in 2006, the California Department of Justice’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS) was a first-of-its-kind system used to monitor individuals who legally purchased or acquired firearms and later became prohibited from owning or possessing them. Together with other California law enforcement agencies, DOJ agents help prevent and reduce incidents of violent crime by using APPS to locate and disarm prohibited persons. The goal of the Gun Violence Reduction Program is to increase local law enforcement’s resources and capacity to help DOJ reduce the number of individuals on the APPS list faster.

Funding for the Gun Violence Reduction Program was provided by the California Budget Act of 2021. This was the first of two grant cycles in which a total of $10 million will be made available. The next will be awarded by January 1, 2023. DOJ will award grants in amounts between $250,000 and $1 million per applicant, per year.