A Tennessee grandmother spent greater than 5 months in jail after police used an AI facial recognition instrument to hyperlink her to crimes committed in North Dakota – a state she says she’d never been to earlier than.
Police in Fargo, North Dakota, have acknowledged “a few errors” in the case and pledged modifications in their operations however stopped wanting issuing a direct apology.
Angela Lipps, 50, was first arrested in Tennessee on July 14, in accordance to a assertion from the Fargo Police Department and a verified GoFundMe for Lipps.
Unbeknownst to Lipps, a warrant had been issued for her arrest weeks earlier – in Fargo, over 1,000 miles away from her Tennessee house. Months earlier than, a number of cases of financial institution fraud had occurred in and round Fargo, in accordance to police.
In their search for a suspect in the financial institution fraud instances, investigators used “our partner agency’s facial recognition technology” in addition to “additional investigative steps independent of AI to assist in identification” earlier than submitting the report to the Cass County State Attorney’s Office, Fargo Police Department Chief Dave Zibolski instructed NCS in an e mail.
But Zibolski mentioned at a Tuesday information convention that his police division’s reliance on among the info from a neighboring company’s AI system is “part of the issue,” referring to errors made in Lipps’ case.
“At some point, our partner agency over at West Fargo purchased their own AI facial recognition system that we were not aware of at the executive level …, and we would not have allowed that to be used, and it has since been prohibited,” he mentioned.
The West Fargo Police Department instructed NCS that they use Clearview AI, a startup with a database of billions of photographs scraped from the web, together with social media. Clearview “identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps” and West Fargo police shared that report with Fargo police, reads a assertion from the police division. The assertion notes that West Fargo police didn’t ahead any expenses and didn’t have sufficient proof to cost anybody for the fraud case in West Fargo.
NCS has reached out to Clearview AI for remark. It’s unclear what different proof was used in the investigation to tie Lipps to the crimes.
Lipps’ case comes as police departments throughout the nation have quickly built-in new applied sciences, together with AI. But police use of the novel expertise has attracted criticism – and it’s been linked to other cases of misidentification.
‘Terrified and exhausted and humiliated’
On July 1, a North Dakota decide signed a warrant for Lipps’ arrest, with nationwide extradition. She was arrested July 14 and spent over three months in a Tennessee jail earlier than being extradited, in accordance to Fargo police and her attorneys.
It wasn’t till October that Tennessee regulation enforcement instructed the Cass County Sheriff’s Office in North Dakota they’d Lipps’ extradition waiver. She was dealing with a number of expenses, together with felony theft and felony unauthorized use of private figuring out info, in accordance to her attorneys.
It’s unclear why it took so lengthy for Tennessee authorities to notify their North Dakota counterparts about Lipps’ arrest. Lipps’ attorneys instructed NCS they “have seen a July 14, 2025 email notifying various North Dakota law enforcement personnel that Angela had been arrested in Tennessee.”
Fargo police, alternately, instructed NCS, “We have been unable to determine based on available information if the length of time Ms. Lipps was in jail in Tennessee before being transported to North Dakota was due to serving time for a probation violation or if it was because she fought extradition.”
NCS has reached out to Tennessee authorities for remark.
Lipps’ extradition to North Dakota, she mentioned in her GoFundMe, was terrifying: “It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane,” she wrote. “I was terrified and exhausted and humiliated.”
In Fargo, she was given a lawyer who discovered financial institution information displaying she had been in Tennessee throughout the time of the crimes, in accordance to the GoFundMe. Fargo police say on December 12, the State’s Attorney’s Office knowledgeable the Fargo detective that the protection had produced “potential exculpatory evidence.”
On December 23, the Fargo detective, the state’s lawyer and the decide “mutually agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice to allow for further investigation,” in accordance to Fargo police. Lipps was launched from custody on Christmas Eve.
For Lipps, her months of incarceration have been devastating.
“The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps’ attorneys instructed NCS in an e mail. Her attorneys mentioned Lipps was unavailable to communicate for an interview.
Lipps, a mom of three and grandmother of 5, had never been to North Dakota earlier than her extradition, in accordance to NCS affiliate WDAY.
And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: “I’m just glad it’s over,” she instructed WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.”
Her authorized workforce says they’re investigating why Lipps was held in custody for so lengthy when “it appears that exculpatory bank records were readily available.”
“We believe that Angela’s lengthy detention was unnecessary and should have been avoided with a proper investigation by law enforcement,” they mentioned.
Her attorneys are exploring civil rights claims however have but to file a lawsuit, they mentioned.
Zibolski, Fargo’s police chief, mentioned authorities had recognized a “couple of errors” in the investigative course of that led to Lipps being recognized as a potential suspect in the fraud instances.
At a Tuesday information convention, police mentioned that the Fargo Police Department doesn’t have any AI-powered facial recognition instruments of its personal, however neighboring West Fargo does – and their system recognized Lipps as a “potential suspect” based mostly on the picture on a faux ID used in a West Fargo fraud case.
“They forwarded that information to our detectives, who then assumed wrongly that they had also sent in the surveillance photos with that photo ID,” Zibolski mentioned.
The chief mentioned Fargo police will not be “sending or utilizing information” from West Fargo’s AI system as a result of “it’s their own system – we don’t know how it’s run or how it’s overseen.”
Instead, Fargo police will work with state and federal authorities, together with the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, he mentioned. Additionally, all facial recognition identifications will likely be submitted to the Investigations Division commander on a month-to-month foundation, “so that we can keep a closer eye on this evolving technology,” he mentioned.
Fargo police additionally erred, in accordance to Zibolski, by not submitting surveillance photographs related to the fraud instances to the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, which he mentioned is licensed and educated in facial recognition. Police “immediately began measures to address that,” and the middle has since supplied the middle with different potential suspects based mostly on the surveillance footage, Zibolski mentioned.
He additionally addressed the months between Lipps’ extradition and her first interviews with Fargo authorities.
“In talking with Cass County and the State’s Attorney’s Office, there’s not an easy mechanism for them to notify us if someone arrested on our felony warrant is into custody,” he mentioned. The division is contemplating enhancements, together with a each day overview of the reserving roster.
Asked if the division plans to apologize to Lipps, the chief mentioned, “At this juncture, we still don’t know who’s involved and who’s not involved” in the fraud instances.
“We’re going to have to whittle through all of this kind of vast network of people and who’s involved,” he mentioned.
Zibolski added police are nonetheless contemplating any disciplinary measures for officers concerned in the investigation.
“What I can tell you, from what I know right now, is that the persons involved are also very upset by this, because they pride themselves on their thoroughness,” he mentioned. “No one wants to see someone detained, arrested unnecessarily.”
The State’s Attorney’s Office can also be “very interested” in attending coaching about facial recognition with the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, “so that they have a better perspective also on the prosecutorial side,” the chief mentioned.
Fargo police beforehand instructed NCS the case continues to be “open and active” and that “the charges may be refiled if additional investigation supports doing so.”
Lipps’ attorneys mentioned that they appreciated the police division’s efforts towards correcting AI-related points in the long run however criticized what they characterised as a lack of “basic investigative efforts” earlier than issuing Lipps a warrant.
“Officers knew that Angela was a Tennessee resident, and we have seen no investigation by officers to determine whether she traveled to or was in North Dakota at the time of the bank thefts,” they mentioned in a information launch after the Tuesday information convention. “Instead, an officer used AI facial recognition as a shortcut for basic investigation, resulting in an innocent woman being detained and transported halfway across the country to answer for charges that she had nothing to do with.”
It’s not the primary time that the usage of AI in policing has attracted scrutiny.
Last yr, armed police handcuffed and searched a Baltimore County high school student after an AI-driven safety system flagged the teenager’s empty bag of Doritos as a attainable firearm.
The incident sparked criticism of the varsity’s security protocols and calls for accountability.
Ian Adams, an assistant professor in the division of Criminology and Criminal Justice on the University of South Carolina, instructed NCS that police are presently quickly adopting new applied sciences, together with AI – with little proof for their efficacy.
“We’re doing it so quickly that all agencies really have to rely on is vendor promises,” he mentioned.
He added that the majority errors involving AI in policing contain human error, too.
“The overwhelming amount of the time, it’s not just a technology problem, it’s a technology and people problem,” Adams mentioned. “We get nightmare scenarios when we don’t have people doing what they’re supposed to do, with technology that they’re using inappropriately.”
Because AI instruments are so highly effective, “it’s very easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency,” he mentioned.
But “your detectives need to be really, really careful to make sure that they’re putting their human eyes on these algorithmic results.”