Koshka Duff’s horrific strip-search is yet another example of rampant police misogyny
It’s taken almost a decade for the Metropolitan Police to apologise to Koshka Duff for the language they used when they sexually assaulted her. Back in 2013, she was arrested after offering legal advice to a 15-year-old who was being stopped and searched. Her treatment that followed at the police station was disgusting. Female police officers handcuffed her and used leg restraints, pinned her to the floor, and cut her clothes off her while male officers were watching.
Duff describes her experience in Novara Media:
Imagine you are surrounded by an armed gang. They tie your hands and legs together, pin you to the ground, and cut off your clothes with scissors. While grabbing you all over, ripping out your earrings and hitting your head off the concrete floor, they crack jokes about the benefits of strapless bras. They call you childish for objecting.
That was my experience of being strip-searched at Stoke Newington police station.
CCTV, obtained by Duff and shown to the Guardian, shows the vile language the police used. A female officer comments on her having “a lot of hair” on her body, while the male officers make disgusting ‘jokes’ about a smell coming from her possessions (“oh, it’s her knickers, yeah?”). One of the men tells his female colleague that she needs “defumigating” after touching Duff. Then they comment on whether they find Duff’s body “rank”.
One police officer is even caught on camera bragging about the size of his dick and how his former partner couldn’t keep all his sperm in her mouth.
Misogyny is instrumental for the police to thrive
It makes me feel sick to read that Duff was talked of like this. But at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me at all. In the UK, comments about women and teenage girls being “rank” is commonplace, as are comments about their body hair, or misogynist insults about the smell of women’s genitalia. Nothing ever improves, and this CCTV footage is one more example of what campaigners and activists have shouted time and time again: that the British police force is a misogynist institution.
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In fact, misogyny is key to the police thriving. Toxic masculinity, macho violence, and a desire for dominance over other human beings are traits that police officers need to do their job well enough to suppress the population. As is the ability to dehumanise people so much that either you get a kick out of treating them like scum, or you’re apathetic about their safety.
As Duff points out, it doesn’t matter what gender the person is when they’re working for a structure that’s misogynistic to its core:
In my experience, female officers can be cruel and vindictive with the best of them. They throw misogynist insults and impose the diktats of normative femininity just as readily as their male counterparts – in fact, they often take this as their distinctive prerogative.
Punishment for refusing to cooperate
It’s important to note that the police haven’t apologised to Duff for the strip-search itself, nor have any of the police officers been disciplined, even after this disgraceful footage was released.
Back in 2018, the police officer who ordered Duff’s strip search was cleared of gross misconduct, saying that her treatment was “for her own safety”. It’s completely unbelievable that pinning someone down, hitting their head on the ground, cutting their clothes off, and then giving them injuries could ever be for their own benefit, and yet the officers involved got away with it, and they will continue to get away with it around the country.
The police use their strip-search powers as a way to punish those who don’t comply with their questions, or who passively or actively resist their arrest. And they know that for those who aren’t cisgendered men, the experience is likely to be even more degrading and traumatic. The Canary’s Emily Apple says:
I’ve been strip-searched several times by the police. On several occasions by force. And predominately, it’s been a punishment because I’ve refused to co-operate.
Apple describes one of these incidents:
I was dragged to a cell, pinned down by male officers, and only realised what was happening when other officers started removing my clothes. Other male officers, including the custody sergeant, watched from the corridor.
Apple talks about the psychological impact that this misogynist, violent policing has had on her:
writing the facts of what happened to me, or reading what happened to Duff doesn’t covey the physical sickness I feel. It doesn’t convey the pain I’m feeling in my arms, neck and back. It doesn’t convey the fact that I have to keep pausing this narrative due to flashbacks and waves of nausea.
And this is important. Not because I want sympathy. But because I think it’s crucial that we recognise the impact repressive and vindictive policing has on mental health. Sometimes the mental scars take far longer to heal than the physical ones.
Holding the police to account is almost impossible
I myself am another woman who has been strip-searched by the police (for my own safety, of course). I also tried to take a civil case, but after a long, drawn out process, my solicitor didn’t think I had much chance of winning, and the case was dropped. It’s only Duff’s gruelling persistence that’s ensured she received her apology and the CCTV footage of her assault.
Duff, Apple, and myself are in positions of privilege: we’re all white women, we know the legal system pretty well, and we know of lawyers who take cases against the police. But most people who have been arrested and strip-searched won’t realise that they can try to take a civil case. And so most incidents continue to happen behind cell doors, and police officers usually aren’t held accountable for what goes on. Even if people do realise that they can take a civil case, the whole system is rigged so that you can’t succeed.
Duff says:
The costs of a civil action against the police are prohibitive. …
Legal aid is paltry and unavailable to most. The application procedure is so complicated that trained lawyers struggle to fill in the forms.
If this is how they treat privileged people…
After reading Duff’s account of how she was treated as a white woman, I can’t help but think about all the BAME women and gender-queer people who are strip-searched. We know that the police are institutionally racist and we know the way BAME people are treated behind cell doors is likely to be worse than anything we face as white women.
And then there’s children. A 2019 report concluded that a “high proportion” of children were strip-searched by the Metropolitan Police. And we know of cases like Georgia Wood, who was strip-searched by South Wales Police at the age of twelve without an appropriate adult present.
There are also all those in prison, the majority of whom are working class, who are subject to extensive strip-searches. We know that more than half of female inmates are victims of sexual or domestic abuse. Strip-searches will only re-traumatise people who have been abused by men.
Duff’s case perfectly portrays the police force as an institution that isn’t willing to change its misogynist ways. This is a Met Police force with a staff member who murdered Sarah Everard, and with other staff members who took photos of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman’s bodies as they lay dead. So it’s perhaps no wonder that the Met can’t even be bothered to discipline its officers over Duff’s treatment. But make no mistake, it is yet another example of why the public should never put their trust in the rotten, violent institution that is the British police.
Featured image via The Guardian / Screenshot
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Ont worry, its not just a female thing, i was stripped in the custody suit n Wandsworth nick, by a 4.5 foot tall hobbit from kilburn. Stature and name applicable. That was on the occasion i was arrested after apparently i made a high speed get away on my girls bicycle, panting like a steam train head down, when stopped, ventual arrested for going equipt to break into houses n steal cars, cause ihad a piece of string and a torch in my pocket, obviously the fs criminality is much greater than mine, i aint got a clue how you would do either using a piece of string. Apparently i was casing the street, as it was a high crime street. Odd the cop didnt know the name of the high crime street. ONce firmly ensconced in my bed n breakfast for the evening. I saw the top of the hobbits head as he opened the cell flap, to tell me i was being done with assaulting a police officer. He looked more the size of a boy scout. But they ust be getting desperate after may got rid of 20,000 cops in a purge of the honest decent police officers, keeping the mindless thugs who get there jollies at about 2- 3 am, as they flat foot it, into the aleged empty flat above to see what im doing in real time. E flat has been empty 10 yers alegedly. But them ghosts move furniture aound, move around like baby elephants, and drill holes down through the concrete above to put their probes etc in to monitor my every move, for the last 24365/*10 years. 23 computers, 19 pads, 13 phones later, i can vouch for it, tbat gideon charles george osbourne was lying back in 2012 ish, i was aware of there presence in2010, when the now named digital assistance dept who set up bugs wire taps and drug stings in hotels in bayswater, across the road from were i was eating my burger the night i got arrested as soon as i left the street were tweedle dum n tweedle dee wore working, but lso hving gonttena burger, on there return saw me did a u turn nleft, thats why i got arrested. My pants pulled down in the custody suit, which i put down to the little perverts ponchon for peeping tom on kids and being a perverted pedo.i have put floor shows on for the boys, nothing. Having usd the toilet for a number 2, heard a distinctive knuckle shuffle when i was wiping my glory hole. I jest you not. Then there was the time i was arrested in my own bought. Flat, when the judge read out the copers reason fo arresting me, he said” he was rather a large gentleman, so i arrested him for his own good” then i was evicted on bail conditions and my name taken of the deeds, there is more. Which the gov stasi in the flat above watched and im sure the dvd is available in all goos spooks data stores world wide. The cops are Corupt run by a third rate foreigner who should be first person on theresa may next unwanted immigrants deportation boat, after all she was sacked by may for having impromptu meetings with netenyahu and central bankers, n isreal, while having lied to may that she was going on holiday for a brea and yet here she is, our health minister was caught ordering up more cocaine for him and the two rent boys he was having a sex party with a few hundred yards way from his wife and children. Then theres all the unsecured ppe contracts, which if you understand council or gov procurement, there a approved supplier list to use for supplying ppe, but boris n co subverted the procedure, how else could they steal over two trillion pounds. Plus his part time bit of fluf jennifer arcuri he took with him on trade trips, lla paid by thectax payers, when her companies went bankrupt owning lots of money, she went back to the usa, when she was back there boris, abused hs position as London mayor, and tole nearly 1 million pounds to give her, like paying a prostitute for the good time had. The money boris stole was intended for new start ups in the uk. Not bankrupt close down american firms. The police as per usual did not investigate, as with boris bridge over the thames which cost us £45 million pounds which he gave to ove arup engineers for the bridge project on land he nevercowned to build on, which had no planning permissio for the bridge, whonelse gives a firm £45 million pounds fora project thats never going to happen. H grayling n his ferry company with no ferries. Remove prisoners reading books. He public funds raided by thersa may, sent to Alexander nix at cambridge analytica, who opened a shell company in canada, to send public funds to boris brexit campaign. Now im not sure what happened to the muslim gay fantasist, who else was called that, beech. Hmmm so the tax payers having been manipulated by theresa may and cambridge analytica, used public funds to fund boris brexit campaign. Sending the public funds a canada to boris who was in reality acting as theresa mays opposition as she was prime minister. Even though she was photoed holding a renain banner. Now which of the17 parties are you talking about, oh soz they quashed it down in the media, so the public think its only one party in boris garden he dint know was a party. If he stays, i recomend we remove our consent to b governed, just as we can remove our consent to be policed. E criteria necessary to initiate thi resending of our given consent is, everything he has done to the british people the elderly murdered on medazalam in care homes, the bonus he in on for every person vaxed. The intended mass eradication of british citizens, from 61 million down to 14,787 million citizens. Ask him.
He is a past pupil of the klaus schwab school of future leadrs.schwab mothe was a rothchild. Who own the un agenda 21: eu, imf,ecb, nato, who, wto, need i go on. Use any or all of it, laterz pedro
Perhaps you might consider using paragraphs and capital letters in future in addition to proofreading before posting, if you wish anyone to read your comments. “Sending the public funds a canada to boris” means what, exactly?
It’s a shame it’s so unreadable.
There are probably some very valid points somewhere in there. But I just can’t follow it, even with my reading glasses on.
I feel very disappointed that he wasn’t in my English class at school. Teachers must do better. It is very sad indeed.
“Fuzz sadistically and humiliate female prisoner”
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