A former southern Colorado jail commander viewed explicit videos of over 100 female inmates undergoing strip searches, saved photos of their faces and bodies and looked them up on social media over the course of five years, according to state investigators.
In a July 22 arrest warrant for Edward “Ed” Aber, Colorado Bureau of Investigation officials detail Aber’s widespread exploitation of confidential La Plata County Sheriff’s Office records from February 2019 to July 2024.
Investigators say Aber logged into an evidence website used to store videos of inmate strip searches more than 3,000 times, often for repeated late-night and early-morning viewings of body camera videos of female inmates being stripped naked and closely inspected for contraband as part of the jail intake process.
Aber, 62, resigned in July 2024 after the sheriff’s office launched an investigation into accusations of inappropriate sexual contact with inmates and sexual harassment from 14 female employees, investigators wrote.
That investigation was first reported by the Durango Herald, and Aber told the newspaper he was “blindsided” by the accusations from colleagues and that he resigned rather than go through an internal investigation.
He wiped all data from his iPad the same day the Herald interviewed him, according to the arrest warrant. The following day, sheriff’s deputies responded to Aber’s workplace because he was making suicidal threats.
The sexual harassment allegations were substantiated through the sheriff’s investigation, the Herald reported, but allegations of sexual contact with inmates were not.
The La Plata County Sheriff’s Office continued to look into Aber after his resignation, and in October found evidence on his work laptop, tablet and computer that he was looking up female inmates and colleagues on Facebook and had saved images from videos of female inmates’ strip searches.
Aber logged into the evidence website 3,166 times from when he first gained access to the files in 2019 – because of a 2018 promotion – until his resignation, sheriff’s officials told the CBI.
A “large number” of the videos were labeled as strip searches, while others were labeled as “suicidal” or “suicide,” which could show naked inmates being processed for intake or under observation.
Aber’s log-in credentials were used to access the evidence website from locations in Arizona, two Denver hotels and other areas likely masked by software designed to conceal IP addresses, investigators wrote.
Aber later told La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith that he would never go to jail and had tried to kill himself during the criminal investigation, CBI officials wrote.
A spokesperson for La Plata County referred questions about the case to the CBI. State officials declined to comment beyond a Thursday news release about Aber’s arrest.
The Sixth Judicial District Attorney’s Office could not immediately be reached for comment.
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