LOS GATOS — An officer has resigned from the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department amid a controversy over his violent beating of a suspect three years ago while working as a San Jose State University cop.
The university fired Johnathon Silva for allegedly using excessive force when arresting a man inside the campus library, but later was ordered to reinstate him when Silva won his job back on appeal.
Both the arrest, and wrangling between the college and Silva over his job, were mostly shielded from public view until the Bay Area News Group and KQED reported it based on records and body-camera videos released earlier this month by San Jose State University under Senate Bill 1421, California’s new police transparency law.
Los Gatos Town Manager Laurel Prevetti confirmed Monday morning that Silva had resigned, effective Friday, but declined further comment. A statement issued by the town later Monday also did not detail the circumstances surrounding Silva’s resignation. But it noted that Silva — hired in September 2018 — was still in his one-year probationary period and could “be rejected at any time during the probationary period without cause and without the right to appeal.”
“Prior to the culmination of Officer Silva’s probationary period, he submitted his resignation giving two weeks notice,” the statement reads. “Given this is a personnel matter, there will be no further comment at this time.”
Town officials continued to defend Silva’s hiring, saying he underwent a “rigorous selection process.”
Los Gatos resident Maureen Fox, one of many residents who objected to Silva’s hiring once she learned about his past conduct, said she and her husband met with Prevetti to voice their concerns about Silva and the town manager mentioned then that Silva was still on probation.
“She said that the matter was under review, and she couldn’t really comment,” Fox said. “But not long after that obviously he resigned.”
Fox said she is “gratified” by Silva’s resignation.
“I think the town will be much safer without him,” she said.
Silva was fired by San Jose State in 2017 for inflicting serious injuries — including broken ribs and a punctured lung — on a man named Philip Chong who was apparently masturbating and watching pornography on a laptop in the school’s library in March 2016. Silva also used a Taser on Chong, who was apparently mentally ill and refusing the officer’s orders to give his real name and birth date, but the stun gun malfunctioned, according to police.
WARNING: This video contains graphic content. Viewer discretion is advised. CLICK HERE if you have trouble viewing the video on a mobile device.
Then-university police Chief Peter Decena and his command staff, while voicing concern about the violence, ultimately decided that the force Silva used was within department policy and training, according to records released by the school. But the college overrode that decision after launching its own investigation when Chong’s sued over the encounter. Chong later won a $950,000 settlement.
Silva appealed his dismissal and a state personnel board ordered him to be reinstated over the objection of the university, which argued that the arrest was an “egregious example of excessive force.” But he chose to resign instead of returning to campus police, and was eventually hired in Los Gatos, where Decena had become police chief a few months earlier.
Silva was also the subject of a separate excessive force lawsuit settled last year for $59,900, after a former student alleged he and another officer smashed his face into the concrete outside a campus concert.
Los Gatos resident Claud Xiao said Silva’s resignation resolves his concerns about that particular officer being on the force, but added that he still has larger questions that have yet to be answered by the town.
“I think we still need to get a lot more transparency about the hiring procedures and the hiring decision making,” he said.
While Fox, Xiao and other Los Gatos and Monte Sereno residents were outspoken about Silva, a more quiet contingent has surfaced to support the officer’s actions at the university library.
Among Silva’s supporters is the father of a student who witnessed the 2016 confrontation and reiterated Decena’s assertions that Chong was under the influence of meth and had caused a similar disturbance in the library a week earlier. The father, who asked that his name be withheld because he still has a child attending the university, said Silva was protecting the public from a serial offender.
Attempts by this news organization to contact Silva have been unsuccessful. Steven Welty, the attorney who represented Silva in his appeal, echoed the state board’s reinstatement ruling and said in an interview earlier this month that Silva “did absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Silva got called to the scene of that to deal with him and ended up in a physical struggle that lasted more than four minutes, most of it by himself with no assistance. So the fact that he didn’t come out of it severely injured or killed is actually fortunate,” Welty said. “He did everything exactly the way he was supposed to. The tragedy here is that the university … had an outstanding officer, a young officer, exactly the kind of person that you want. This is a caring guy that wanted to do a good job and do things right.”
KQED reporter Julie Small contributed to this report.
This story was produced as part of the California Reporting Project, a collaboration of more than 40 newsrooms across the state to obtain and report on police misconduct and use-of-force records unsealed in 2019.
