Community order for man who called Tory MP’s office saying: ‘I’m coming for you’

A man has been given a community order after calling the office of Tory MP Mike Freer and saying: “I’m coming for you.”

Last month James Phillips, of Brampton Park Road, north London, admitted making the call on January 31, the same day Mr Freer announced on his website that he will stand down at the next general election following a series of death threats and an arson attack on his constituency office.

The 46-year-old appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday to be sentenced for an offensive or menacing telephone call and assaulting a police officer.

District Judge Neeta Minhas made a 14-month community order, with 25 rehabilitation activity days, and imposed a restraining order banning Phillips from contacting Mr Freer directly or indirectly for two years.

The office of Finchley and Golders Green MP Mr Freer received three calls on January 31, two of which were “heavy breathing” and the third which involved the defendant saying: “Make sure to tell the police I’m coming for you, you c***, not just Mike Freer but you as well.”

The politician’s personal assistant said Phillips had been calling and emailing with abusive messages for approximately three or four years, the court heard.

But Rita Patel, defending, said her client does not accept that he made communications of a threatening nature previously.

Phillips’ last conviction, prior to the offences for which he was sentenced on Wednesday, was in 2016 for common assault, and the judge described his most recent offending as a “bit of a blip” in his recovery process.

But while she acknowledged the eight-year gap in offending, Judge Minhas said Phillips had “no end of offences of violence and making threats to other people” up to 2016.

Phillips’s phone call to Mr Freer’s office was recorded and workers recognised the number as that of the defendant, the court has heard previously.

After he was arrested and taken into custody, he attempted to punch a police officer who was trying to bring him out of a cell for an interview.

On Wednesday, Ms Patel also referenced Phillips’ childhood trauma and possible mental health issues in mitigation, and told the court that the officer received no injuries.

The defendant will have to pay the officer he tried to punch £200 in compensation.

In Mr Freer’s announcement of standing down at the next general election, which was made on January 31 and included a letter to his local Conservative association dated January 28, the MP said it was time to “say enough” as he could no longer put his family through the anxiety for his safety.

The Conservative politician said that “by the skin of my teeth I avoided being murdered” by Ali Harbi Ali, who went on to kill Southend West MP Sir David Amess.

“There comes a point when the threats to your personal safety become too much,” he said in an interview with the Daily Mail.

The MP and his staff have decided to wear stab vests when attending scheduled public events in his constituency after learning that Ali had watched his Finchley office before going on to knife Sir David to death during a constituency surgery in 2021.

In a letter to his local Conservative association, Mr Freer wrote that it “will be an enormous wrench to step down”, but that the attacks “have weighed heavily on me and my husband, Angelo”.