Former Campus Officer Johnathon Silva Appeals Excessive Force Against Philip Chong, Wins Job Back

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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's 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.

This wasn’t the first time Silva had been accused of excessive force. A 2017 lawsuit filed by then-student Alan Chen alleges that Silva and a fellow officer "flung" him to the concrete face-first, breaking his teeth and causing him to lose consciousness in 2015.

Records show, Silva was given a warning in 2015 on a performance evaluation to “not let his frustrations get the best when dealing with uncooperative subjects in the field.”

The school settled with Chen for an undisclosed amount last year. The university has not yet responded to questions about that incident.

In November of 2016, the university launched an internal investigation into the library incident, and Silva was placed on administrative leave.

The university fired Silva in August 2017. But he appealed with the backing of his department and his fellow officers.

Silva won his appeal and was reinstated in May 2018. The university contested that decision with a strongly worded filing from the school’s attorney, Katherine Winder, but the personnel board declined to reconsider.

Silva never returned to active duty with the school's police force, according to a university spokeswoman. He resigned on Oct. 1, 2018, the day he was scheduled to return to work.

Silva apparently still had the support of his former chief, Peter Decena. After about eight years, Decena had left the school in 2017 to head up the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department.

Decena hired Silva as a Los Gatos officer in September 2018.

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