Former San Jose State Cop Fired for Excessive Force Won Job Back on Appeal

555 San Jose State University fired Officer Johnathon Silva for excessively beating, kicking and tasering an apparently mentally ill man in a school library in 2016, but the cop won his job back over the objections of administrators. The school released the internal affairs investigation on Wednesday in response to a public records request under the state's new police transparency law. The records reveal that the university's administration was directly at odds with the police department over Silva's actions on March 17, 2016. Police officials said he followed his training when confronted with a non-compliant suspect. In the university's version, Silva was an officer with a history of being short-tempered who "lost control of the situation," unnecessarily beating a man so badly that his lungs collapsed, and was dishonest about it. Silva is now an officer with the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department under the same chief who supervised him at San Jose State. "Based on the administrative review and recommendations, it was my determination that the use of force was within policy," Police Chief Peter Decena said in a press release issued Wednesday. The files released by the school include graphic body-cam footage showing the incident unfold over about 10 minutes. It was the morning of March 17, 2016, when Silva responded to reports from library security officers of a man looking at pornography and potentially masturbating on the eighth floor, records show. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library is open to the public and the man, Philip Chong, was not a student. Silva asked Chong for his name and birthdate. The two went back and forth for a little bit, and Chong's answers got progressively more bizarre. "Satan for Earth," he said at one point. "The head of the Italian mobsters," Chong said at another. Chong also wouldn't provide his date of birth. I need you to stop fucking around," Silva said, his voice becoming agitated as he moved toward Chong. It escalated from there. Silva grabbed Chong's arm in a wrist lock and pulled him out of the chair to arrest him. They went into a wall and then Silva wrestled with Chong down an aisle of books, eventually going to the ground. "Roll on your stomach," Silva yelled at Chong, and then told the man he was going to use his Taser on him. Silva used his Taser on Chong multiple times, kneed him and hit him with a baton. Chong moaned and screamed. At that point, other officers arrived and gained control of Chong. He was taken to the hospital with broken ribs, collapsed lungs and cuts on his face and head. Records show Chong spent 10 days in the hospital. Silva wrist was also fractured in the incident, according to the records. Police recommended prosecutors charge Chong with lewd acts, resisting arrest, battery on a peace officer and drug possession. Police had been called to the library before in regard to Chong. He'd been found vaping one time and was arrested for being on drugs and talking to himself on another occasion. Chong's attorney, Stuart Kirchick, called him a "very intelligent young man, but suffering, unfortunately, from a mental illness that started unusually only a few years prior." Kirchick said that his client spent a few days in jail, but that Santa Clara County prosecutors dismissed all charges after they saw the body-cam footage from the library. "He [Chong] was not willing to give his true name to the officer and that just completely set the officer off," Kirchick said. "I mean he just completely lost his temper and used unreasonable force in the process of detaining him ... to just find out his name." Chong filed a claim with the university in September 2016 and the school settled, paying him $950,000.

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