In the Name of Security
Edward Aber was the commander of La Plata County Jail in Colorado from 2005 to 2024. Throughout his tenure, he developed a reputation for sexual misconduct. In 2024, 14 female employees reported that, for years, Aber had been making inappropriate sexual remarks and advances. He was placed on administrative leave in July 2024.
“That case led to an investigation,” says Siddhartha H. Rathod, a partner at Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC, which represents the plaintiffs. “They found a number of screenshots on his computer that looked like screen grabs of strip searches.”
Under jail policy, all deputies must wear a bodyworn camera during strip searches; that footage is then automatically uploaded to an evidence.com database accessible only to the sheriff and other select personnel. According to the investigation, led by Lieutenant Joseph LaVenture, from 2019 to 2024, Aber logged into the database at least 3,166 times — viewing 115 strip-search videos from his home and, on at least one occasion, from a hotel.
On September 3, 2025, 18 women who were stripsearched in this jail filed a lawsuit against Aber.
Rathod says his clients have had panic attacks and trouble sleeping since the allegations became public. “They feel like they can’t exist within their own skin because they know that a creepy former jail commander used videos of their strip search to get off,” Rathod says.
The case against Aber has since been consolidated into a class action lawsuit, Hiehle v. Aber. La Plata County has filed a motion to dismiss its liability. Aber also faces more than 100 criminal charges related to the allegations; his lawyers have requested that the criminal trial, scheduled for November, be moved out of La Plata County, arguing that widespread local coverage of the case makes a fair jury pool impossible to find there.
Between January and March 2025, the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Michigan — the only women’s prison in the state — required guards to wear body cameras during strip searches. Prison officials claimed that, since cameras are always recording, they feared reprimand for not conducting searches precisely by the book.
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