Man wrongly identified and arrested for masturbating on bus awarded £5,000 police payout
A man who was wrongly arrested after being accused of masturbating on a bus has opened up on how it has changed his life.
Despite winning a £5,000 payout from police after being wrongly accused of the crime, Brent Naylor claimed that the damage had already been done.
The 56-year-old was 'identified' following a Metropolitan Police appeal, though they realised soon after apprehending him that he was the wrong man.
Sadly though, Naylor's life would take a turn for the worse as members of his community saw him getting arrested in November 2021.
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Naylor, from Finsbury Park, north London, was believed to have been a man who was masturbating at a woman on a London bus.
He said that the police's arrest of him for indecent exposure - that proved to be false - has meant he's had to deal with verbal and physical abuse since then.
Revealing that he is disabled, Naylor also claimed that he has been assaulted, evicted from his home and barred from his favourite pub after people saw him getting handcuffed by six officers.
Naylor claimed: "They pinned it all on me without actually investigating at all. It was disgusting."
He mentioned that the suspect was described as six foot and 'fat', while describing himself as 'the slimmest person alive'.
"Now I don’t trust the police," the Londoner admitted, before claiming: "They have put my life in danger. They are horrible people."
Someone claimed that he was the man responsible for indecent exposure on a bus that was headed to Kentish Town in May 2021, as the man described to have dark brown hair, got off in Islington.
Not sharing too many similarities with a CCTV image released by police, officers showed up to Naylor's door and arrested him. Despite being cleared of any crimes, he says he is still heckled and has recently been hospitalised after an attack.
The 56-year-old said his nail-patella syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes issues with his bones and drunk, means he 'can’t straighten my arms'.
"They knew I was disabled. Why handcuff me at all? There were six of them and one of me," he pointed out.
But Naylor was allegedly in custody for seven hours before a senior officer realised he didn't look anything like the suspect, as he had a '26 to 28-inch waist' according to officers, who were looking for someone with 'a rotund beer belly stomach'.
"People followed me home, calling me a n***e - and I had done nothing wrong," he insisted, before adding: "It’s not nice, getting called a nonce."
Naylor revealed that he was cracked over the head in an assault before Christmas, with what he believed to be a bottle.
He explained: "I can’t remember getting hit, I just woke up in the hospital and saw blood on the bed."
But he didn't want to call the police, as he had 'no faith' in them to 'investigate it properly', instead taking legal action against the Met Police with the help of MK Law.
One of their caseworkers said: "There was a clear and obvious way of distinguishing him from the suspect, such that he shouldn’t have been arrested if the police had conducted their task with due diligence."
The lawsuit further revealed that police officers allegedly made the case harder to catch the real culprit, after failing to secure blood and semen samples.
Despite being paid £5,000 out of court, Naylor said that it was 'never about the money'.
“I still get nightmares and panic attacks. I hear police sirens go by and I think they’re coming for me," he said, adding that he fears that the culprit may commit a more heinous sexual crime as a result of the police's alleged incompetence.
Metropolitan Police stated that the paid amount was 'without admission of liability'.
A spokesman said: "There was no evidence of any officer wrongdoing or misconduct."
The Met Police's press office stated that it was not aware of any further arrests.
Joshua Nair