Koshka Duff

It’s time to defund the police

My abuse at their hands was Orwellian – and totally routine

(Getty)

Last year I finally received an apology from the police after I was violently strip-searched in 2013. Video footage subsequently emerged of officers at Stoke Newington police station using ‘sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language’ to discuss my ill-treatment. I was arrested after attempting to hand information to a black 15-year-old about his rights during a stop and search, then forcibly stripped when I refused to give police my details. Officers were recorded joking about whether my body was ‘rank’. ‘What’s that smell?’ asked one officer. ‘Oh yeah, it’s her knickers’.

What happened to me was not exceptional. The solicitor for another victim last week described the use of strip searches to punish and coerce detainees as ‘a low-level form of torture’. Meanwhile the Independent Office for Police Conduct found Met officers routinely joked about raping women, beating their partners and killing black children. Rather than protecting the most vulnerable in our society, the police demean, dehumanise and abuse them.

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