Marshall Mathers appeared at Brighton Magistrates’ Court yesterday where he faced a rap – but not of the musical kind.
The 42-year-old former hairdresser found himself before the bench after being arrested for begging in Jubilee Street, Brighton, on Monday 5 December.
Mathers, formerly known as Glen or Colin Dowsey, had been sat in his sleeping bag in a doorway on a cold clear day and said that he wasn’t begging.
But on the way to the cells in the back of a police car, sat in handcuffs, he managed to hit a police community support officer (PCSO).
And once he reached the custody centre – formerly known as the cell block – he was asked to allow a mouth swab to be taken so that he could be tested for drugs. He refused.
The assault and his refusal to test for drugs led to Mathers’s court appearance yesterday (Wednesday 1 February).
He was given a four-week community order and an overnight curfew at Glenwood Lodge, the hostel where he lives, in Grand Parade, Brighton.
It’s at the other end of the eight-mile road to Lewes Prison where Mathers was sent on Wednesday 31 August last year.
He was jailed for eight weeks for threatening to harm himself and others in Gardner Street, Brighton, on the afternoon of Saturday 13 August, causing a nuisance to the public and disruption to the public and local businesses.
He had clambered up on to the roof of the shops. Perched – with his baseball cap on the right way round – a stand-off had ensued, lasting the best part of two hours.
Magistrates said that he had to be jailed because the offence was so serious and he had posed a significant danger to the public, aggravated by his history of offending.
He also damaged his cell, in Crowhurst Road, Hollingbury, earning him another week in prison – to be served at the same time as his eight-week sentence.
And he got another week for an earlier offence of having cannabis – again in Gardner Street – on Friday 29 January 2016. It wasn’t the first time that he was convicted of having drugs.
In July he had been given a 12-month conditional discharge for the drugs offence. The court ordered him to pay £150 prosecution costs and a £15 victim surcharge – to be deducted from his benefits. He has been hit in the pocket before.
Yesterday, after being sentenced, he said that it was hard to find work with a prison record and hard to get by with money being deducted from his benefits. He hadn’t been begging, he said. But, he added, he had few if any realistic alternatives.
And he was clean, he said. He looked it, too. But he had had lapses in the past, having not always found it easy to get the methadone that he had been prescribed. The opiate is commonly used to help people give up heroin.
In October 2015 Mathers “used threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”. The offence also took place in Gardner Street.
As he was being dealt with, he assaulted a constable in the execution of his duty, earning a six-week community order, with an overnight curfew, enforced with an electronic tag.
In 2015 he was also given a community order – for burgling premises in Gardner Street – and in the previous December he was given a conditional discharge for setting off a fire alarm. Nor was this his first offence of criminal damage.
From 2013 he had an assault conviction, for causing actual bodily harm (ABH), and at least five separate convictions for battery. Plus he was caught with drugs.
Marshall Mathers may not be the real Slim Shady – to borrow from the Eminem track and the performer whose name the defendant has taken. But his back catalogue has a familiar feel.
He has repeatedly been asked to “please stand up” – before magistrates who appear powerless to prevent another encore. Yesterday – with few genuine alternatives – it was the same old song.
This has nothing to do with Marshall! This is just bad reporting.
Imprisoning a man with obvious problems is ridiculous and gross. Fining him then makes his already precarious situation untenable, so he offends again, and we arrest him again. Reminds me of cutting off a felon’s hand for stealing bread. What century do we live in, FFS?
way to kick a guy when he’s down
Frank le Duc, I’m guessing you have never been homeless or in any real distress, often resulting substance use and mental health problems.
Many who end up on the streets are already vulnerable and struggling before hand.
In these days of disappearing resources and help for such people we need community help and an understanding attitude.
Not some hack turning someones obvious issues into a joke for column inches.
The likes of you only serve to hinder the advances we as a society need to make.
Instead of trivialising and demonising, how about writing about how someone like the focus of your article is trapped in a hard to escape circle and has less and less chances of escaping it as our country gets sold off by the elite.
This reads a lot more sympathetically to me than you seem to think. It looks like the sad case of one individual has been used to shine a light on a system that is failing this man and many more like him. Classic case of shoot the messenger!
Visiting journalist calling.. Frank, have you taken leave of your senses? The namesake gag wasn’t strong enough to run the punny wordplay from the start. Add the context and it’s just one overly long ramble into poor taste territory. You’re lucky IPSO doesn’t have a code for crass and offensive commentary, stick to straight news.
The man clearly has behavioural problems, arrogance to seek proper advice and help chiefly among them it seems. Let us not forget the public and law enforcement people who have to put up with his embarrassing and often dangerous behaviour. Yes, it should be highlighted so people can take steps to protect themselves from him, should they choose to do so.
The couldn’t care less in the Community strikes again.Care in the Community and the Right to Buy are the worst ideas imposed upon this Country in the last 50 years.
This man is actually a serial offender who also repeatedly abused good hard working people for money. He has been abusing and neglecting dogs, ripping people off for money and cries victim over and over again. He takes no responsibility for himself or anything else in his life and leaves other people fending for the dogs he keeps repeatedly getting. This has been going on for many many years. He professes to be vulnerable in order to take advantage of people even today. He has no respect for anything living or otherwise at all.