other cases<\/a> of misidentification.\n <\/p>\n \u2018Terrified and exhausted and humiliated\u2019<\/p>\n
\n On July 1, a North Dakota judge signed a warrant for Lipps\u2019 arrest, with nationwide extradition. She was arrested July 14 and spent over three months in a Tennessee jail before being extradited, according to Fargo police and her lawyers.\n <\/p>\n
\n It wasn\u2019t until October that Tennessee law enforcement told the Cass County Sheriff\u2019s Office in North Dakota they had Lipps\u2019 extradition waiver. She was facing multiple charges, including felony theft and felony unauthorized use of personal identifying information, according to her lawyers.\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s unclear why it took so long for Tennessee authorities to notify their North Dakota counterparts about Lipps\u2019 arrest. Lipps\u2019 attorneys told CNN they \u201chave seen a July 14, 2025 email notifying various North Dakota law enforcement personnel that Angela had been arrested in Tennessee.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Fargo police, alternately, told CNN, \u201cWe 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.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n CNN has reached out to Tennessee authorities for comment.\n <\/p>\n
\n Lipps\u2019 extradition to North Dakota, she said in her GoFundMe, was terrifying: \u201cIt was the first time I had ever been on an airplane,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI was terrified and exhausted and humiliated.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In Fargo, she was given a lawyer who found bank records showing she had been in Tennessee during the time of the crimes, according to the GoFundMe. Fargo police say on December 12, the State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office informed the Fargo detective that the defense had produced \u201cpotential exculpatory evidence.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n On December 23, the Fargo detective, the state\u2019s attorney and the judge \u201cmutually agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice to allow for further investigation,\u201d according to Fargo police. Lipps was released from custody on Christmas Eve.\n <\/p>\n
\n For Lipps, her months of incarceration were devastating.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,\u201d Lipps\u2019 lawyers told CNN in an email. Her lawyers said Lipps was unavailable to speak for an interview.\n <\/p>\n
\n Lipps, a mother of three and grandmother of five, had never been to North Dakota before her extradition, according to CNN affiliate WDAY.\n <\/p>\n
\n And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: \u201cI\u2019m just glad it\u2019s over,\u201d she told WDAY. \u201cI\u2019ll never go back to North Dakota.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Her legal team says they\u2019re investigating why Lipps was held in custody for so long when \u201cit appears that exculpatory bank records were readily available.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe believe that Angela\u2019s lengthy detention was unnecessary and should have been avoided with a proper investigation by law enforcement,\u201d they said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Her lawyers are exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit, they said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Zibolski, Fargo\u2019s police chief, said authorities had identified a \u201ccouple of errors\u201d in the investigative process that led to Lipps being identified as a potential suspect in the fraud cases.\n <\/p>\n
\n At a Tuesday news conference, police said that the Fargo Police Department doesn\u2019t have any AI-powered facial recognition tools of its own, but neighboring West Fargo does \u2013 and their system identified Lipps as a \u201cpotential suspect\u201d based on the image on a fake ID used in a West Fargo fraud case.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Fargo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/still-22468012-88446-44-still-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThey forwarded that information to our detectives, who then assumed wrongly that they had also sent in the surveillance photos with that photo ID,\u201d Zibolski said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The chief said Fargo police will no longer be \u201csending or utilizing information\u201d from West Fargo\u2019s AI system because \u201cit\u2019s their own system \u2013 we don\u2019t know how it\u2019s run or how it\u2019s overseen.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Instead, Fargo police will work with state and federal authorities, including the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, he said. Additionally, all facial recognition identifications will be submitted to the Investigations Division commander on a monthly basis, \u201cso that we can keep a closer eye on this evolving technology,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Fargo police also erred, according to Zibolski, by not submitting surveillance photos associated with the fraud cases to the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, which he said is certified and trained in facial recognition. Police \u201cimmediately began measures to address that,\u201d and the center has since provided the center with other potential suspects based on the surveillance footage, Zibolski said.\n <\/p>\n
\n He also addressed the months between Lipps\u2019 extradition and her first interviews with Fargo authorities.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIn talking with Cass County and the State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office, there\u2019s not an easy mechanism for them to notify us if someone arrested on our felony warrant is into custody,\u201d he said. The department is considering improvements, including a daily review of the booking roster.\n <\/p>\n
\n Asked if the department plans to apologize to Lipps, the chief said, \u201cAt this juncture, we still don\u2019t know who\u2019s involved and who\u2019s not involved\u201d in the fraud cases.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to whittle through all of this kind of vast network of people and who\u2019s involved,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Zibolski added police are still considering any disciplinary measures for officers involved in the investigation.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhat 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,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one wants to see someone detained, arrested unnecessarily.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office is also \u201cvery interested\u201d in attending training about facial recognition with the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, \u201cso that they have a better perspective also on the prosecutorial side,\u201d the chief said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Fargo police previously told CNN the case is still \u201copen and active\u201d and that \u201cthe charges may be refiled if additional investigation supports doing so.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Lipps\u2019 attorneys said that they appreciated the police department\u2019s efforts toward correcting AI-related issues in the future but criticized what they characterized as a lack of \u201cbasic investigative efforts\u201d before issuing Lipps a warrant.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOfficers 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,\u201d they said in a news release after the Tuesday news conference. \u201cInstead, 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.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s not the first time that the use of AI in policing has attracted scrutiny.\n <\/p>\n
\n Last year, armed police handcuffed and searched a Baltimore County high school student<\/a> after an AI-driven security system flagged the teen\u2019s empty bag of Doritos as a possible firearm.\n <\/p>\n\n The incident sparked criticism of the school\u2019s safety protocols and calls for accountability.\n <\/p>\n
\n Ian Adams, an assistant professor in the department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, told CNN that police are currently rapidly adopting new technologies, including AI \u2013 with little evidence for their efficacy.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing it so quickly that all agencies really have to rely on is vendor promises,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n He added that most mistakes involving AI in policing involve human error, too.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe overwhelming amount of the time, it\u2019s not just a technology problem, it\u2019s a technology and people problem,\u201d Adams said. \u201cWe get nightmare scenarios when we don\u2019t have people doing what they\u2019re supposed to do, with technology that they\u2019re using inappropriately.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Because AI tools are so powerful, \u201cit\u2019s very easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n But \u201cyour detectives need to be really, really careful to make sure that they\u2019re putting their human eyes on these algorithmic results.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tennessee grandmother spent more than five months in jail after police used an AI facial recognition tool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-552256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}