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 in need of 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 situations 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 circumstances, 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 informed CNN in an e-mail.
But Zibolski stated at a Tuesday information convention that his police division’s reliance on a number of 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 stated.
The West Fargo Police Department informed CNN that they use Clearview AI, a startup with a database of billions of images 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.
CNN 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 know-how has attracted criticism – and it’s been linked to other cases of misidentification.
‘Terrified and exhausted and humiliated’
On July 1, a North Dakota choose 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 informed 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 informed CNN 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, informed CNN, “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.”
CNN has reached out to Tennessee authorities for remark.
Lipps’ extradition to North Dakota, she stated 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 data exhibiting she had been in Tennessee in the course of 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 legal professional and the choose “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 had been devastating.
“The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps’ attorneys informed CNN in an e-mail. Her attorneys stated Lipps was unavailable to converse 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 CNN affiliate WDAY.
And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: “I’m just glad it’s over,” she informed WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.”
Her authorized staff 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 stated.
Her attorneys are exploring civil rights claims however have but to file a lawsuit, they stated.
Zibolski, Fargo’s police chief, stated 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 circumstances.
At a Tuesday information convention, police stated 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 stated.
The chief stated 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 stated. 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 stated.
Fargo police additionally erred, in accordance to Zibolski, by not submitting surveillance images related to the fraud circumstances to the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, which he stated is licensed and educated in facial recognition. Police “immediately began measures to address that,” and the middle has since offered the middle with different potential suspects based mostly on the surveillance footage, Zibolski stated.
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 stated. The division is contemplating enhancements, together with a day by day assessment of the reserving roster.
Asked if the division plans to apologize to Lipps, the chief stated, “At this juncture, we still don’t know who’s involved and who’s not involved” in the fraud circumstances.
“We’re going to have to whittle through all of this kind of vast network of people and who’s involved,” he stated.
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 stated. “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 stated.
Fargo police beforehand informed CNN the case remains to be “open and active” and that “the charges may be refiled if additional investigation supports doing so.”
Lipps’ attorneys stated that they appreciated the police division’s efforts towards correcting AI-related points in the longer term 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 stated 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 12 months, 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, informed CNN that police are at present 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 stated.
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 stated. “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 stated.
But “your detectives need to be really, really careful to make sure that they’re putting their human eyes on these algorithmic results.”
