A man won £5,000 [$6159.10 USD] payment by police after being wrongly accused of masturbating to a woman on a London bus.
Brent Naylor, from Finsbury Park, north London, was arrested over the incident after he was ‘identified’ following a Metropolitan Police appeal.
But despite officers quickly realizing he wasn’t their man, the damage was done – after neighbors saw him embracing.
The 56-year-old says the police’s inability to arrest him for an indecent exposure he didn’t commit has made him the subject of verbal and physical attacks ever since.
Brent, who is disabled, has been assaulted, evicted from his home and even banned from his favorite pub since he was handcuffed by six officers at his front door, he claims.
He said: “They put everything on me without investigating at all. It was disgusting. The description of the boy was six feet.
“I’m 5’8. I am the thinnest man in the world and this guy was fat. Now I don’t trust the police. They put my life in danger. They are terrible people.”
Mr. Naylor’s ordeal began after someone claimed he was the man in a witness appeal for indecent exposure on a Kentish-bound 393 bus in May 2021.
The man – who was over six feet tall and described as “chubby” with dark brown hair – was reported to have landed in Islington.
When the police released a CCTV image, someone called and gave Mr. The name Naylor.
Despite looking nothing like the man in the shared image, officers arrived unannounced and arrested him in front of his neighbors.
But even after being cleared of any wrongdoing, Mr Naylor says he is still routinely threatened on the streets.
Just before Christmas, he was hospitalized after being hit on the head with what is believed to have been a bottle.
“It’s not good to be called noce [alleged or convicted sex offender]said Mr. Naylor. “It is shameful. I know everyone here. There are still people behind me. I was attacked just before Christmas.”
After being reported, police investigated Mr Naylor, discovering that he had short graying hair and was significantly shorter and thinner than the offender.
But they listed him as a “probable suspect” anyway.
Then, in November 2021, he was visited by arresting officers.
“Six police officers turned up on my doorstep,” Mr Naylor explained. “They said they had a search warrant for my country. It was a complete shock.”
Mr. Naylor is registered as disabled due to nail patella syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes ongoing problems with his bones and joints.
“I can’t straighten my arms,” he said, adding that the handcuffs had caused long-term pain.
“They knew I was disabled. Why are you handcuffing me at all? There were six of them and one of me.”
It was only after he had been in custody for more than seven hours that a senior officer looked at him and realized that he looked nothing like the suspect.
Police documents said the suspect was “of large build, with a round belly.”
Meanwhile, the officers have registered Mr. Naylor as “very slim, with a 26 to 28 inch waist”.
“It was necessary [the senior officer] two seconds to realize it wasn’t me,” Mr Naylor said.
“How could others think it was me?”
He was immediately released.
However, his ordeal was not over as neighbors witnessed his arrest.
Mr. Naylor says that after his arrest, his landlord served him with an eviction notice and he was also later threatened by a gang of men who “frogged him” out of his favorite pub.
After that, he said, he stopped drinking [pub] – not because staff thought he was guilty, but because they said they “couldn’t guarantee my safety”.
Mr. Naylor admitted the injustice still bothers him.
“Why do I have to leave?” he said. “If they cause trouble, they should be stopped. Why me? I have been haunted. People followed me home, calling me nonce [alleged or convicted sex offender] – and I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Just a few weeks ago, he was hit in the head with what is believed to have been a bottle in a street attack.
“I don’t remember being hit,” Mr. Naylor explained. “I just woke up in the hospital and saw blood on the bed.”
Despite the heavy attack, Mr. Naylor says he didn’t bother calling the police.
“I have no confidence in their ability to investigate it properly,” he said.
Mr Naylor later took legal action against the Met Police, hiring lawyers from MK Law to fight his case.
MK Law caseworker Duncan Burtwell said:[Mr. Naylor] is an absolutely wonderful guy and, at the time all this happened, he was also a vulnerable person.
“There was a clear and obvious way to distinguish him from the suspect so that he would not have been arrested if the police had done their duty with due diligence.”
The lawsuit also revealed that police officers had failed to obtain blood and semen samples left on the bus by the actual offender, which will make it more difficult to catch him going forward.
Met recently decided Mr. Naylor’s case out of court, paying him £5,000 [$6159.10 USD] in damages as well as his legal expenses.
But he says it was “never about the money”, adding: “It was more of a cause. In my opinion, it is abuse. The police abused me.
“I still have nightmares and panic attacks. I hear police sirens going by and I think they’re coming for me.”
Meanwhile, the perpetrator of the crime remains wanted and Mr. Naylor worries his offending could escalate as a result of his removal from the 2021 incident.
He fears the arsonist will graduate to rape or murder, all because the police “didn’t do their job properly.”
The Met said it had paid the damages “without admitting liability”.
“There was no evidence of wrongdoing or misconduct by the officer,” a spokesman said.
The force’s press office said it was not aware of any further arrests in connection with the bus incident.
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