The lawyer for the man accused of assaulting Mayor Daniel Lurie's bodyguard in a Tenderloin alley last week suggests that the confrontation was entirely the mayor's fault, and he did not need to stop his vehicle to engage with the men on the street.

An initial report about last Thursday's altercation between SF Mayor Daniel Lurie's security detail and two men on the street at Cedar and Larkin streets suggested that the mayor and his bodyguards had exited the SUV after it was blocked from proceeding down the alley. But Lurie later clarified that he had stopped to talk to the two men becuase he was "worried about them" — as part of the ongoing on-the-street outreach he has done since taking office last year, specifically in the Tenderloin.

44-year-old Tony Shervaughn Phillips is now charged with assault on a police officer, and resisting an executive officer and causing great bodily injury, and he was arraigned on those charges Wednesday morning. Phillips additionally faces a charge of contempt of a court order, because he was reportedly under a court's stayaway order pertaining to the very block where the incident occurred. (We also learned last week that Phillips was a suspect in the the August 2019 killing of 42-year-old Curtis Neal on Fern Street, about two blocks away from where last week's incident occurred, but charges were ultimately dropped for lack of evidence.)

The bodyguard, an SFPD officer, reportedly intervened when Phillips appeared to move toward Lurie, and the ensuing scuffle was caught on video from at least two angles. One video showed the officer shoving Phillips to the ground before he got up and then began wrestling with the officer, quickly pulling him to the ground.

According to court documents, Phillips allegedly yelled "Bruce Lee I’ll kick your ass!" at the officer before the shove occurred.

Lurie could be seen walking out of the video frame as the tussling began. In the days since the incident, the mayor and his security detail have been accused of overreach, and Phillips's sister has spoken out about how her brother suffers from mental illness, telling the Chronicle that he also probably didn't know he was engaging with a police officer, because the security guard was dressed in a suit.

As the Chronicle reports, Phillips's defense lawyer, Ivan Rodriguez, spoke to reporters outside the courtroom after Phillips entered a not guilty plea Wednesday.

"I don’t know how that’s right for the mayor to be doing so,” Rodriguez said, regarding Lurie's outreach stop which led to the incident. "I don’t think that’s leadership. I think that’s performative. It’s a situation where he put his security detail [and residents] at risk."

Rodriguez further said Lurie was "wrong for what he did," and said the mayor should admit as much.

Lurie held firm in a Chronicle interview Wednesday, saying, "It is my job to lean in. If I’m not doing it, how can I expect my department heads and my [police department] and sheriff and park rangers to interact with people that are of concern?”

Lurie also tells the paper that "The video is an incomplete view of the situation," and that this was "the first time that there’s been any physical altercation out of hundreds and hundreds of interactions that I’ve had on the street."

He insists he's going to continue doing these check-ins with individuals on the streets, adding, "I did again this morning."

Previously: Two Men Charged In Altercation With Mayor's Bodyguards In Tenderloin