Woman Reveals How Police Officers Cut Off Her Clothes After Intervening In A Stop And Search

Dr. Konstancja Duff, then 24, had intervened in a police stop and search by trying to hand a detainee a card showing him his rights and declining to give her name. The teenager was later found to be carrying a knife, but many people will maintain that Koshka, as known by friends, was so naïve to have gotten involved. 

Dr. Konstancja Duff had been handcuffed and groped after intervening in a police stop and search.

However, what transpired next was impossible to imagine. Koshka was handcuffed and taken to a police station where she was stripped, searched, manhandled, legs bound, handcuffed behind her back, groped, and held in a cell for 24hrs. On her release, the now-33-Year-Old recalled being charged with obstruction and assaulting two police officers. 

The charges had carried three-month and six-month jail terms, respectively. Thankfully, proof to hold the police officers accountable for their actions had emerged. Koshka had found a horrifying CCTV footage of her time in custody, which was recently made available to the public. “As well as being scared, the overwhelming memory was the pain of it all,” Koshka stated.

The Cambridge graduate, then 24, had tried to hand the detainee card showing him his rights.

In the video, Custody Sergeant Kurtis Howard, who had ordered the strip search, could be heard telling officers to treat her like a terrorist. While other policemen and women mock Koshka, describing her as rank and disgusting and making inappropriate comments about the smell of her underwear. Kosha added: “Watching it for the first time last year, I felt really sickened. You would think that after what I had been through, nothing could shock me but the contempt, the dehumanizing attitude, the misogyny – it was disgusting.”

But then, it resulted in Koshka being taken to the station, where she was strip-searched and held for 24 hours.

“The prevailing sense the whole time I was in the station was that the police thought there was nothing to stop them, that they had no one to be accountable to. They closed ranks, and right up to the last minute, they thought they would get away with it.” Few people have since fallen on Koshka’s side with Scotland Yard Officials, who have finally apologized for the officers’ sexist, derogatory, and unacceptable language and even awarded Koshka compensation.

The apology comes as some comfort to Koshka, now an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham. In 2018, Koshka had successfully asked for a judicial review of the IPCC’s findings, which the commission was then instructed to reinvestigate. Thankfully, she was told Sgt. Howard had been accused of gross misconduct relating to his decision to order a strip search.

CCTV of her time in custody is now public, with officers calling her ‘rank’ and making inappropriate comments.

In 2021, she again launched legal action, having obtained the CCTV footage from her arrest and by a full apology has been compensated with the sum of £6,000. However, Koshka has declined to release the names of all the officers involved in her treatment, with the exception of the custody sergeant. Presently, she remains plagued by flashbacks and panic attacks and suffers from chronic pain in her waists. 

Koshka is the first to acknowledge she’s an unlikely victim of police brutality. While she’s musically gifted, she had been raised in Aberdeen and studied philosophy at Cambridge University, followed by post-graduate qualifications at Harvard and the University of London. On the other hand, her unusual first name is inspired by her mom’s happy memories of her time in Poland.

Scotland Yard has apologized for the unacceptable language’ used and even compensated Koshka.