A former San Jose police officer was sentenced to five years in federal prison for possession of child pornography, five years after officers discovered the images while searching his computer for evidence of plots to kill police officers, judges, liberals and minorities.
U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila on Friday handed down the sentence for Denis Shevchenko, 45, of Gilroy, after finding him guilty last October following a bench trial in federal court in San Jose.
Shevchenko had been indicted by a federal grand jury in June 2022.
The indictment followed his arrest in November 2021, after officers discovered child pornography on Shevchenko’s home computer.
At the time of his arrest, Shevchenko was employed as a civilian community service officer with the San Jose Police Department. Prosecutors said that before his civilian job, Shevchenko had worked as a San Jose police officer and as an officer with the Pinole Police Department.
Court documents showed that the investigation into Shevchenko began when FBi agents traced violent, threatening, anonymous alt-right statements on gab.com to his home computer.
According to officers affidavits presented to the court to obtain a search warrant, the online posts included the following:
- “It's time to start shooting the ‘police’ who stand against the people. ….Any person would be justified in shooting them dead….Hunt them all down.”.
- “Of course, crazy, divorced, subhuman libtards …must be culled indiscriminately, no matter their age or ‘orientation,’ so our children don't have to deal with those parasites.”
- “I call for the eradication of the black robed despots…. I no longer recognize their authority, and consider these third worlders from our nation. …Subhumans. … Cull them like vermin, to better our society, improve life for our families, and our children's future.”
The agents didn’t find what they were looking for in that raid five years ago, but said that the electronic devices seized from Shevchenko’s home contained “numerous videos and thousands of images of child pornography.”
The search allowed by the warrants yielded an assault rifle at his home, and a loaded handgun in his locker at the South San Jose police substation, authorities said at the time.
Initial state misdeameanor charges on the weapons violations were later superseded by the federal child pornography charge.
