Sometimes choosing a career as a preacher means you also have to have a side hustle. For Bishop William Marshall, pastor of City of Life Worship and Deliverance Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that meant owning a barbershop. Honest work to pay the bills, but Marshall apparently was not paying the electricity bill.
It has been a subject of Black barbershop stereotypes that there is always someone there trying to hustle a product or service. When the electricity was turned off in 2013 at Marshall Artz Barbershop and Tattoo for failure to pay a $4K past due balance, Marshall had a problem. Somehow that problem was fixed and the electricity soon was back on at the barbershop.
Back in October 2016, investigators from the United Illuminating Company discovered that the meter was still running and electricity was still being delivered to the barbershop. Investigators examined the meter and discovered it had been illegally reconnected allowing power to be restored to the barbershop but not registering the service on the meter.
On Wednesday, Feb. 1, police arrested Marshall on a charge of third-degree larceny. According to investigators, Marshall stole 33,782-kilowatt hours for a total of $8,191.86. He went before a judge and was later released on a promise to appear in court. Marshall is also a member of the city’s fire commission.
Pastors doing shady things unworthy of God have been in the news recently. Pastor O. Jermaine Simmons, who is a church leader at Jacob Chapel church in Tallahassee, Florida, was caught in a sex scandal that almost led to him getting shot. He was having sex with the wife of a member of the church in the couple’s daughter’s room. When the enraged husband went to get his gun, Simmons fled the premises naked.
