Suzanne Garcia looked down and away from the officer’s gaze as she went through the motions of a routine jail intake inspection: Remove all clothing, including underwear. Raise both arms. Lift each breast. Run fingers through hair. Show hands and feet. Turn 180 degrees. Bend over and squat. Separate butt cheeks. Cough.
Garcia had been arrested in 2020 and booked at the La Plata County Jail in Durango, Colorado, because of a years-old restraining order that was later dismissed. She remembers asking the female jail officer why she needed a strip search. The response: “This is just what we do in La Plata County,” Garcia recalled.
It all felt excessive, Garcia told The 19th, but she complied. She had no other choice. “It’s cold and it’s humiliating,” Garcia said. “You just feel like an ant under a microscope. It’s just, it’s terrible.”
What Garcia did not know at the time was that her search was recorded by the officer’s body-worn camera. She was released from jail and moved on with her life. Then, last year, she received an unexpected phone call from a Durango Herald reporter with a shocking revelation: Her video was one of dozens of searches that had been improperly viewed by La Plata County Jail’s commander, Edward Aber.
Over the course of five years, Aber allegedly logged into the county’s evidence database more than 3,000 times and viewed strip search videos of 117 incarcerated women, according to county and state officials. In criminal charges filed last year, authorities said the viewings sometimes happened from hotel rooms and residential addresses.
This article was published as a partnership between The 19th News, an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, policy and power, and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.