Tony Phillips, the 44-year-old man charged with a felony count of resisting an executive officer and assault on a peace officer in his fight last week with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s security detail, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday morning.
His court-appointed attorney, Ivan Rodriguez, put much of the blame for the incident on Lurie, who approached several men on the sidewalk and street at the edge of the Tenderloin on Thursday evening, asking them to move along, as Mission Local first reported. The men refused to move, Rodriguez acknowledged, and Phillips became “argumentative, not combative.”
A San Francisco police officer assigned to Lurie’s security detail, however, engaged physically — he is seen on video twice shoving Phillips before the two men ended up grappling to the pavement. The officer, Joel Aguayo, ended up bleeding from the back of his head after striking it on the ground.
Phillips did not know that Lurie was the mayor, Rodriguez said, nor that Aguayo, Lurie’s bodyguard, was a police officer. Both approached looking like “two people in suits,” and simply instructed Phillips and the other people on the street to “move along.”
“The mayor lured his security detail into engaging in this senseless altercation, all for political theatrics, your honor,” Rodriguez said in the courtroom on Wednesday.
He urged the judge to view surveillance footage of the scene and to release Phillips from jail. Judge Sylvia Husing said she would review the footage and make a decision this afternoon.
“The video shows very clearly that Mr. Phillips was not the aggressor in this case,” Rodriguez said. “He was shoved twice, at which point, he had to defend himself.”
Phillips appeared in an orange sweatshirt and sweatpants, and bright orange Crocs-like sandals. He spoke inaudibly with his attorney after the hearing ended, and peered around the courtroom, handcuffed, before being taken back to a holding cell.
Surveillance footage showed Lurie and Aguayo speaking with men at the corner of Cedar and Larkin streets, before Phillips appeared to try to move around Aguayo. Suddenly, Aguayo is seen shoving Phillips to the ground; he would later claim Phillips threatened him saying “Bruce Lee I’ll kick your ass.” Phillips rose, and Aguayo shoved him again.
At the scene, Mission Local reported that Lurie had “hopped out” of his vehicle and, when the men refused to comply, Aguayo had intervened. Lurie, for his part, told Mission Local that the men had tried to fight a police officer, but declined to say anything more and did not mention that the officer had become physical first.
“They wanted to engage and confront these individuals that were out on the street” at Lurie’s direction, Rodriguez said, “I don’t think that’s leadership — I think that’s performative.”
Rodriguez said that “the mayor should be held accountable,” and called on Lurie to make a statement admitting he was wrong, and ask the district attorney to dismiss the charges against Phillips.
But the DA is taking the opposite tack: Prosecutor Erin Loback argued for keeping Phillips in jail because of his purported public safety risk, and for “securing Mr. Phillips’ presence in court when less restrictive means have been unsuccessful.”
Loback noted that Phillips frequently fails to appear in court and has been arrested and cited multiple times near Cedar and Larkin streets despite a court order.
Phillips is additionally being charged with contempt of court, because of that order to stay away from the location where the incident occurred.
If this guy gets released from jail, I will join team Garry Tan.