The Senate Judiciary Committee heard HB 26-1123, a bill to prevent sexual abuse in jails that arose from a La Plata County case in which a jail commander viewed strip search recordings of 117 female inmates at least 3,166 times. The bill was laid over for amendment consideration after law enforcement witnesses raised conflicts with existing Colorado statutes and operational concerns.
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Commander Drew Ottoman of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office argued the two-staff independent determination requirement should apply only to 'discretionary incident specific strip searches' and not to 'routine protocol driven searches,' stating that applying it to routine searches 'adds redundancy without increasing safety' and 'will create delays during high activity periods.' He estimated 90 to 95% of his agency's searches are protocol-driven. Bill sponsors Weissman and Amabile did not directly concede this point but acknowledged stakeholder concerns require resolution in the amendment posture.
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“The arrest Affidavit that they filed said that he should be arrested for 117 counts of invasion of privacy for the purpose of sexual gratification. Gratification, by the way, those are misdemeanors. And one count of official misconduct. Despite the recommendation by the CBI to arrest Aber, the sheriff's department quietly served him with a summons at his front door. He was not arrested, he is not on Bond, and despite 117 restraining orders, he has been allowed to keep his father firearms and move about our community with no pre trial service supervision.”
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Sign in to subscribeGood afternoon, everybody. Senate Judiciary will come to order on Wednesday 8th April. Ms. Jensen, please call the roll. Senators Carson Doherty. Excused. Henriksen. Excused. Wallace. President Zamora Wilson. Present. Roberts. Here. Mr. Chair. Here. All right, quorum is present. Just to note, our agenda had previously been on the docket for today. That is going to be heard instead at another time. We are also not taking up Senate Bill 96 today. That will be before the committee at another point, which makes our sole item of business Today, House Bill 1123. I will be co presenting that with Senator Amabile. For that reason, Senator Roberts will be presiding as chair and I will pass him the gavel. Okay. Good afternoon. We are here to hear testimony on House Bill 1123 by Senators Amabile and Weissman, who are before us. Who would like to start? Senator Amabile? I'll start because I always like to do the emotional appeal and then turn it over to somebody else to do the actual technical parts. So I'll start with why the bill, and I don't know if you all heard about this case in La Plata county where the sheriff was found…
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