Drunk drug dealer caught in crash offered cut-price cocaine if Portsmouth FC scored

Driving with a fearsome machete under his passenger seat, Steve Jones – who is also known as Stuart Clapson – crashed his Audi A3 in Gladys Avenue.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard police who arrested him on April 17 last year found cocaine in the car, and more at his flat in the North End street.

The 42-year-old escaped with a £120 fine and 17-month ban when he was sentenced last year for drink-driving.

But officers analysing his Alcatel mobile phone found drug advertising text messages sent to 30 people – and a list of 200 names kept at his home.

Police found £2,665 in cash at his home and he was prosecuted for drug dealing.

Jailing him for 40 months, judge Roger Hetherington said Jones had been ‘offering, for example, discounts in the manner of a practised drug dealer’.

Among those messages was a discounted offer if ‘Pompey scores a goal,’ prosecutor Tom Wright said.

Detailing what was found, he said: ‘(At the flat) they found a total of three packages of drugs, 2.83g in a bag that contained lots of deal bags, there was 0.72g contained in two packages also in the car that had crashed outside.’

Deal bags with residue on them were found along with electronic scales.

Jones was jailed for 40 months despite pleas from his barrister, Jane Osborne QC, who said her client was turning a corner having got work and training.

Jones, who has suffered a stroke and several heart attacks in the last 12 months, was also the carer for his grandfather who has dementia, she said.

He had been introduced to social use of cocaine by friends in the pub and it ‘became an easy source of additional income for him’.

She added: ‘The defendant accepts that he has gone off the rails.’ But Miss Osborne added he had ‘made himself a useful and law-abiding man of society’.

Judge Hetherington said Jones had an ‘extensive list of convictions’ having been jailed in 2011 and he was ‘plainly in it for his own financial advantage’.

In March, Jones, now of Fratton Road, had denied being concerned in the supply of cocaine between March 30 and April 18 last year, possession with intent to supply the same class A drug, possession and having criminal property.

He admitted them last week.

Proceedings were dropped against his co-defendant Cherish Connor, 33, of Sunnyside Walk, Leigh Park, and the judge recorded not guilty verdicts.

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