Video shows Mayor Lurie’s security shoving man before fight
A day after a San Francisco police officer on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s security detail told Mission Local that he was attacked while guarding the mayor, new security footage calls that claim into question.
In a TikTok video posted online Friday, which appears to be a snippet from a surveillance camera over the Lower Nob Hill alley, the bodyguard appears to speak to Tony Phillips, 44, the man later identified by the San Francisco Police Department as having attacked the officer. Lurie is seen standing a few feet behind.
Phillips, holding a blanket, is standing next to another man. He appears to try to walk around the bodyguard, approaching within a foot of his body.
Then, in a matter of seconds, the bodyguard abruptly shoves Phillips backward, knocking him into a pile of debris on the sidewalk.
Philips rises and comes back at the bodyguard. The officer makes contact with him a second time, and the two go into a clinch.
The bodyguard holds Phillips in a headlock before Phillips throws the officer to the ground, where the officer hit his head and sustained an injury.
As the two men hold onto each other, Lurie can be seen backing away and then hurrying out of frame, seeming to signal to someone on Larkin Street.
Moments later, another officer runs towards the two men on the ground, trying to pull Phillips off of the bodyguard, who is pinned to the ground.
Another man, who officials identified as Abraham Simon, stood by as the two men fought. He briefly rushes towards the second bodyguard and shoves him to the ground before backing away.
At the scene on Thursday evening, Mission Local witnessed the bodyguard bleeding out of the back of his head. The officer told his fellow cops that two men had refused to comply with requests to move along, and that Phillips had come at him.
The video calls the officer’s narrative into question.
The San Francisco Chronicle was first to report on Friday’s video.
Lurie, when asked about the incident, also told Mission Local that the men had tried to fight a police officer but did not mention the officer shoving the man to the ground.
This morning, Lurie told press gathered at his City Hall office that the men had been blocking the middle of the street, though the 90-second TikTok video shows both men standing near the sidewalk on Cedar Street with plenty of room for cars to pass by.
The mayor’s spokesperson declined to comment and said that the police investigation is “ongoing.”
Phillips and Simon were arrested at the scene. Phillips was booked for threatening an executive officer, assault on a peace officer with force likely to cause great bodily injury, battery on an officer, resisting or obstructing an officer, and petty theft and possession of drug paraphernalia. Simon was booked for resisting or obstructing an officer.
In 2019, Phillips was accused by police of stabbing a man to death a few blocks away, at Van Ness Avenue and Fern Street, though prosecutors declined to charge him.
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