THIS WEEK AT THE VOICE FOR THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2026
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Mayor’s SUV attacker diverted many times; city proposes mandatory spay/neuter laws as dog population explodes
by Susan Dyer Reynolds
Editorial Director, The Voice of San Francisco
On the early morning of Aug. 16, 2019, Tony Phillips stabbed 42-year-old Curtis Neal during a physical confrontation on Fern Street and Van Ness Avenue. Authorities said the two men exchanged words and started fighting after the victim poked at Phillips with a stick. Then-District Attorney George Gascón declined to press charges as Deputy District Attorney Max Szabo cited “lack of evidence” (the attack was caught on video). If the name Szabo sounds familiar, that’s because Mayor Daniel Lurie now pays him six figures as a consultant. If the name Tony Phillips sounds familiar, that’s because he’s the man arrested for brutally attacking one of Lurie’s security guards last Thursday when the mayor ordered Officer Nicholas Boccio to pull his Rivian SUV over so he could hop out and ask two homeless men to move along as they sat on the corner of Cedar Street in the Tenderloin. Phillips refused, leading to the altercation with Lurie’s other bodyguard, Officer Joel Aguayo.
Above: Tony Phillips’ SFPD mugshot from 2019 murder arrest.
It turns out Phillips has a long criminal record in San Francisco. Besides the 2019 murder, he’s been arrested for threats of violence, drug use, drug sales, and burglary, among other things, going back to 2014. Yet throughout 2025, and as recently as this past December, Phillips has repeatedly been released to pretrial diversion, which, as I’ve written before, doesn’t work and needs a complete overhaul. …
Above: Tony Phillips has been released on pretrial diversion multiple times.
On April 9, the public safety committee will hear a proposed ordinance amending the Health Code to require that every dog in San Francisco, with certain exceptions, be sterilized, rather than requiring such procedures only for pit bulls. As a longtime advocate (and pit bull mom), I fought for the legislation years ago when around 98 percent of dogs at our city shelter Animal Care & Control (ACC) were pit bulls and most were being euthanized. After it was enacted, euthanasia rates fell dramatically. Now, because of Pandemic Puppy Mania and the homeless who breed and sell puppies on the streets for drugs, the city shelter is in crisis. Between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, ACC killed 550 dogs.
Who opposes the legislation? The wealthy, private San Francisco SPCA, which I exposed in a 2009 undercover investigation for doing almost nothing to help San Francisco dogs despite having $132 million in assets raised in the city’s name. Over 50 percent goes to salaries, including more than $1 million to their top three executives. While ACC limps along understaffed on a shrinking budget, the SFSPCA cherry-picks from the Central Valley, playing life or death with easily adopted dogs to raise their live release rate and use the data to solicit more donations. Right now shelters and rescues are full of everything from French bulldogs to Doodles (more than 37 percent of animals in shelters are purebreds and hybreeds). The SFSPCA has an adversarial relationship with ACC — I describe it as they hold the gun and make ACC pull the trigger. Grassroots rescue groups like Rocket Dog, California Bully Rescue, and Beyond Rescue take in more dogs than the SFSPCA, which charges them exorbitant rates for services in their multimillion-dollar hospital and doesn’t even offer a single spay and neuter van.
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Top News
EDUCATION
School district risks a deficit in public trust
Questions surround key upcoming decisions.
The aftermath of the historic teachers’ strike enables, or forces, the San Francisco Unified School District to return attention to its ever-present and looming challenge of public trust. From the start of negotiations, school district leaders maintained that they could not afford to fully fund family health care for educators.
EDUCATION
Has the oppressor-oppressed binary passed its freshness date?
Packaging everything into this closed ideological system is a neat trick. By prohibiting any question or challenge, it instrumentalizes children for the goals of its adult enforcers.
TRANSPORTATION
91% of SFMTA transit operators work overtime, totaling $41M in 2024
Overtime was concentrated among higher earners: the top one-third of overtime earners accounted for two-thirds of overtime payout ($27 million), while the top 30 individual earners combined collected $2 million in overtime pay.
by Liz Le
Quote of the week
“After eight years, can you imagine if you sit on a commission and then all of a sudden, you’re told we’re not going to do this? That was very upsetting.”
— Roberto Hernandez, member of an SFMTA working group, in “SFMTA board approves $612 million Potrero Yard overhaul with scaled-back housing“
Nomi toon
In Case You Missed It
TRANSPORTATION
SFMTA board approves $612 million Potrero Yard overhaul with scaled-back housing
Transit officials greenlight a major renovation of the Muni Potrero Yard, but tensions linger over a scaled-back housing vision tied to the project.
by Jerold Chinn
HOUSING
Can California innovate its way out of its homegrown housing crisis?
State legislators are drawing on new research that underscores the challenges and the opportunities to improve the situation.
by John Zipperer
A&E
Spring exhibitions at YBCA shine a light on community and storytelling
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents two new exhibitions this month: Diedrick Brackens: gather tender night and Conjuring Power: Roots & Futures of Queer & Trans Movements.
by Sharon Anderson
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EVENTS
This week’s newsletter was produced early due to a one-time scheduling change, so we don’t have a preview of the events. But click below to see the published events curated by Lynette Majer.
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