Nick Smith
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
DENVER — A former La Plata County jail commander criminally accused of viewing and replaying thousands of strip-search videos of women inmates over a five-year period for sexual gratification is being sued again along with the county’s sheriff, court documents show.
Edward Aber, 62, became commander of the jail in Durango in 2018 and was granted access to Evidence.com, a website that helps law enforcement store video footage obtained through body cameras and other sources, a year later. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation alleged in July that Aber took advantage of this access to view the strip searches of 117 women inmates from 2019 to 2024.
Law firms Rathod Mohamedbhai and Rocky Mountain Victims Law Center are suing Aber and La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the inmates, claiming the women were subjected to unlawful strip searches and endured “physical manipulation” and “penetration” by jail officials.
Recordings were then stored instead of deleted despite there being no contraband found and then were made “freely accessible” to senior jail officials such as Aber.
The law firms further claim in a Thursday news release that Smith “scraped the bottom of the barrel” when hiring Aber despite credible claims of sexual harassment at his previous job in law enforcement.
The news release states Aber’s time at the jail was “marred” by his inappropriate conduct, noting that Aber told jail employees to join him in watching the videos, would visit female inmates in their cells and take them to accompany him on errands.
In Aber’s arrest affidavit, it’s noted that a female inmate was seen under Aber’s desk by an employee on one occasion. Aber gave the explanation that the inmate was adjusting wires.
Legally, there is no such thing as a consensual sexual encounter between inmates at a correctional facility and the officials charged with overseeing their incarceration.
“Even though Commander Aber’s misbehavior was visible to all in the jail, no one in La Plata’s government stood up for the women abused by Commander Aber. The sheriff did not adequately train, monitor or discipline Commander Aber or other jail employees. And jail employees did not adequately raise concerns about Commander Aber’s conduct,” the law firms state in a Thursday news release.
A spokesperson with the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office said the organization does not comment on active litigation.
This is the second lawsuit Aber faces after attorneys filed a federal class-action lawsuit against him in August.
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Aber’s legal counsel, Durango-based Barrier Newberger King, did not immediately respond for comment on the lawsuit.
According to CBI, the investigation into Aber began in early 2025, when the agency was contacted by the Sheriff’s Office to assist in its probe of “alleged inappropriate viewing of sensitive video footage.”
By then, Aber was already gone from the jail, having resigned soon after he was put on administrative leave amid allegations of unlawful sexual contact with female inmates and claims that he sexually harassed numerous female jail employees.
No formal charges resulted from those accusations, but Aber left his post in July 2024, amid the ongoing investigation, according to CBI. It was only after the accusations that investigators checked Aber’s history of accessing the strip-search videos.
Some of the videos Aber viewed were purged from the database, meaning that it’s likely the number of women is higher, according to his arrest affidavit.
“The full impact of Commander Aber’s abuse is not yet known because the jail’s system purged evidence of his improper access. But it is already clear that Commander Aber’s abuse fits into a pattern of institutional and personal failures,” Rathod Mohamedbhai stated in the news release.
Aber, charged with 117 counts of invasion of privacy for the purposes of sexual gratification and one count of first-degree official misconduct, is scheduled to appear in court at the La Plata County Courthouse Monday afternoon for a motion hearing.
A pretrial hearing on Aber’s misdemeanor charges is set for Oct. 13.
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