A woman claims that Austin Police Department breathalyzed and victim-blamed her after she reported being kidnapped at gunpoint in October 2015 in a now-viral TikTok.
In the video posted by TikToker Ash Koborssi (@kbosssy) on Monday, she shares “things APD did when [she] got kidnapped at gunpoint.” Text overlay on a clip of her dancing to “Happiness” by Alexis Jordan lists that the Austin Police Department “breathalyzed me (twice),” asked “‘Are you sure you’re not high? What were you wearing’,” and “made me walk home.”
The video is captioned, “Oh ya and I was 100% sober!” and has reached over 61,000 views as of Tuesday.
@kbosssy Oh ya and I was 100% sober! #apd #kidnapped #austin #ACAB ♬ original sound – KyleAndJackieo
In an Instagram direct message to the Daily Dot, Koborssi explains that after she escaped, she ran to the first cop car [she] could find” and told them that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint.
“They breathalyze me and seemed pretty upset when I blew completely sober, basically told me they couldn’t help me,” Koborssi told the Daily Dot.
She says that she attempted to report the incident to a different cop, but when they radioed over to the other cops about the situation “the first set of cops radioed back” calling her story “bullshit.”
“No one asked me if I wanted to file a police report,” she continued. “I didn’t really know how to follow up because it just didn’t seem like anyone cared to begin with. I never really bothered calling in to file a police report because essentially, the second set of cops told me, ‘If you don’t know what he looks like, or if you can’t recall what he looks like, if you can’t recall what the car model was, then there’s nothing we can really do to help you.’”
Koborssi isn’t the only woman coming forward about how she was treated by the Austin Police Department. In January, the City of Austin settled a lawsuit with 15 survivors of sexual assault who claimed their cases were mishandled by the Austin Police Department between 2006 and 2019.
CBS Austin reports that the city has “spent $3.5 million since 2019” in an effort to improve sexual assault investigations by the Austin Police Department. According to data provided by the City of Austin, “as low as 9% of all sexual assault cases are reported in Texas.”
In the comments, other women shared their experiences with reporting assault and harassment to Austin Police Department.
“Girl I was attacked walking home in Austin once and the cops didn’t even try to find the guy (who was on foot in the neighborhood),” one user shared.
“APD is terrible. I had a bad experience when reporting a DV where the girl was being held against her will. They did NOTHING,” another said.
Despite ranking in the top ten safest cities in the United States, Koborssi no longer felt safe in Austin and relocated following the incident. “It’s such a shame because Austin used to be an incredible and peaceful place to live,” she told the Daily Dot.
The Daily Dot reached out to the Austin Police Department via email but was not met with an immediate reply.
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