Civilian officer charged with crimes
SAN JOSE >> A civilian community service officer for San Jose, who briefly served as a sworn police officer, has been charged with gun crimes after he reportedly elicited FBI attention for his remarks to followers of altright social media, including allegedly advocating for killing cops.
Denis Shevchenko, 40, of Gilroy was charged this week with three misdemeanor counts, alleging illegal weapons possession, topped by a charge that he kept an unpermitted loaded handgun in his locker at the South San Jose substation of the Police Department, which oversees the community service officer program that employs him. He was arraigned Oct. 19 and is currently out of custody.
San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata said Shevchenko is on paid administrative leave pending an ongoing investigation by the Police Department and the FBI, which brought the alleged conduct by Shevchenko to light.
“These allegations are extremely serious and are being fully investigated to determine the extent of any criminal conduct by our employee, and the extent to which any others may be involved,” Mata said at a Oct. 22 news conference, adding that his department has requested “the FBI’S continued assistance in this investigation to identify others that may be involved or have similar ideologies.”
Calls made to listed phone numbers for Shevchenko were not answered, and court records do not show a listed attorney for him.
The weapons charges resulted from a police investigation into Shevchenko prompted by the FBI San Francisco Bay Area division’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which reportedly linked him to a series of potentially threatening comments posted May 24 on the alt-right social media platform Gab.
According to a police investigative summary accompanying the criminal complaint, he allegedly “solicited people to shoot police officers and to kill people based on political ideation.” According to the police summary, FBI agents also told San Jose police that Shevchenko “posted additional generalized threats to shoot and ‘cull’ law enforcement officers.”
The allegations against Shevchenko were revealed amid a national spotlight that shined on police ties to alt-right and anti-government ideologies and groups following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“Law enforcement agencies are porous and face a variety of threats,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino and a former police officer. “The mainstreaming of this has created a wider fringe of influencers and echo chambers, and law enforcement has traditionally had a more conservative audience. It has created this national security threat, and this (Shevchenko’s case) is an example of something that is happening more routinely.”
SJPD spent the past year recovering from a social media scandal that surfaced in the summer of 2020 amid the George Floyd demonstrations, centered on bigoted and Islamophobic posts and comments on Facebook by a group of retired and active officers.
Four active officers were investigated: One was terminated pending an appeal, one was suspended and two were cleared.
Mata noted that the department since has instituted a policy governing officers’ “online presence” and is instituting specialized training for officers who conduct internal personnel investigations to identify extremist sympathies and activities among its officers and potential recruits.
“This is an extremely important issue. They have access to weapons, intelligence, and locations,” Levin said. “We have to identify people before they have access to these sensitive positions.”
The FBI probe into Shevchenko, which traced the messages to his home IP address, was relayed to San Jose police Oct. 14. That night, San Jose police officers arrested him while he was on duty at Paypal Stadium.
Police said a search warrant served the same night at Shevchenko’s home led to the seizure of at least nine firearms registered to him, including an AR15 style rifle that authorities say had illegal features including a flash suppressor and pistol grip.
Early the next morning, police state that after interviewing Shevchenko, they discovered he had a loaded and holstered .357 revolver attached to a pair of pants in his duty locker.
Shechenko is not authorized to carry a gun as part of his duties as a community service officer. The CSO program in San Jose was formed in 2014 in part to delegate non-enforcement police tasks like taking nonurgent reports and maintaining crime scene cordons, thereby keeping sworn officers available for emergency response.
According to police records and the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training — which certifies police in California — Shevchenko graduated from the San Jose Police Department academy in March 2013, but he left the agency five months later, before he completed his probationary period. Records also show he was briefly with Pinole police for about four months before leaving in April 2014, which also would have fallen within his probationary period at that agency.
Public records show that Shevchenko joined San Jose’s CSO program right around its launch, about four months after he left Pinole police.
The rifle at his home, the handgun in his locker, and a concealed boot knife that police reportedly also recovered form the basis of the misdemeanor weapons charges against him. No charges have been filed related to his alleged online posts, which Mata said are still being evaluated by police and the public integrity unit at the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
On Oct. 15, San Jose police obtained a gun-violence restraining order for Shevchenko. This restraining order draws on the state’s red-flag laws and authorizes law enforcement to temporarily seize a person’s guns based on information that they could pose a public danger, and is in effect pending a Jan. 20 Santa Clara County Superior Court hearing to assess Shevchenko’s fitness to get back his weapons.