A Tennessee grandmother who spent six months in jail after facial recognition tech falsely linked her to a North Dakota bank fraud investigation now wants compensation for what happened. Angela Lipps is suing the City of Fargo and a Fargo Police Department detective for $10 million over the incident, which led to the loss of her home, car, and dog.
In July 2025, a team of US Marshals arrested 50-year-old Lipps in Tennessee at gunpoint while she was babysitting four young children. She was booked into the county jail in Tennessee as a fugitive from justice wanted in North Dakota.
Detective Lucas Heck proceeded with charges despite knowing that Lipps lived in Tennessee, had never visited North Dakota, did not match the physical description of the suspect captured on surveillance footage, and had no unexplained funds linking her to the thefts.
Wow, ACAB. How wildly incompetent are they?
Yeah, but they closed a case!!
Doesn’t a judge or DA or someone have to approve charges? Was it really all left up to one guy’s shot judgement?
In an ideal world, she’d win every penny and the money would come out of the assets of each and every person involved in her arrest, including their immediate superiors so that lessons would be learned.
She lost her assets through no fault of her own. Seems only fair that they should lose theirs, if not worse, because they actually did something wrong.
That’s a bit vindictive. They probably didn’t pick the software or didn’t even know how it worked.
The idiots that did, and that trusted the facial recognition without verification, the company that made it (if it made false claims), those look more like the ones responsible.
They didn’t do due diligence. It was easily prevented by double checking everything
Heh, you said “do due”
" ‘I was only following orders’ […] The refuge of scoundrels since the dawn of time. " - Patrick Ness
No, I’ve no idea who Patrick Ness is either, but it’s a quote from one of his works, and it happens to be true.
“Sorry you got shot, our police officers never got firearm training.”
A woman was locked up for 6 months and lost everything, they deserve so much worse. They attempted to use software to do their work for them.
“Sorry you got shot, our police officers never got firearm training.”
I mean, that’s pretty much most USA police departments. Average training budget only gives them about 25 rounds a year per officer… if that sounds like very little, that’s because it is.
If you see a deleted comment I misread what you said reslly feels like that should be per month.
Then again firearm training doesn’t cure racism and negligence so maybe keep them poorly trained.
deleted by creator
Sounds like the problem could be solved by halving the number of officers.
10 Million seems low to me. Cars and homes can be replaced: pets and neighbors and community cannot be replaced, they are priceless.
Hope she gets every single dime and that cops loses every fucking thing he owns. Ruin her life knowing goddamn well she was not guilty.
The lawsuit should include whoever wrote that train wreck of a headline, too
And the state? They jailed her with insufficient proof.
they jailed her with pretty much no proof, pretty much a call from north dakota sayin “go arrest this grandma”
Buried in the article, it came out that the face they used as “proof” was the picture on the FAKE ID that the actual suspect used. They did exactly 0 investigative work. The computer spat out a picture with a name and they just went in guns drawn.
In front of kids.
The only “good” part I guess is that they didn’t shoot her or the kids.
yep, I know. All this, but the lawsuit, broke a couple months ago.
the lawsuit is the only new bit of information in the story
It’s “funny” how they never call it “AI” in these kinds of fail tales.
The big talk lately is about making ai your public defender.
So imagine getting fasley accused of a crime and your Ai lawyer throws the case in everyway possible.
At that point we might as well make ai the judge jury and executioner.
Thanks palantir.
There’s a new Chris Pratt movie about that, which paints it in a positive light for some reason.
Holy shit that movie sounds like hot garbage
It was, lol
Thats probably what my brain was referencing.
Every person that did the shoddy police and prosecution work should have to lose their house and spend 6 months in jail to keep their jobs.
And their dog.
I’ve heard about these things happening before.
The cops have surveillance video of a suspect, and they feed it into a face recognition AI. The AI then searches for people who look like the suspect.
It’s not finding the suspect. It’s finding pictures of people who look like the suspect. The cops are supposed to use that to determine if anyone the AI identified possibly could be the suspect.
However, any stupid, lazy cop will pretend that is sufficient and away they go.
From what I’ve read, the face matching applications even state clearly that the match doesn’t constitute any kind of proof that the person identified is actually guilty of anything. Anyone with any brains would understand that you need to have independent verification before even considering arresting someone. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t want people with brains working as cops.
They dont hire cops for their brains… im not entirely sure what the credentials for cops are, but brains is probably a disqualification.
brains is probably a disqualification.
That’s what I’ve heard.
This is also on whatever hillbilly prosecutor they have in ND that didn’t immediately dismiss the charge when it came across their desk.
How was this not like immediatly cleared up, dont people have bond hearings within the week, whos rubber stamping this shit
Everybody should just periodically read random court cases, this stuff has always been extremely common and the sop when the mistakes are uncovered is to double down, just attempt to fully bury the innocent person in the system. This is a daily occurrence in every single state in the US.
Real talk, I just saw a quick video about how the mythbusters proved two dudes didn’t start a fire they were tortured into signing a confession for. They got a hearing and it was shown that the sheriff had a history of putting innocent people away. And after they were PROVEN FUCKING INNOCENT, they still spent another 17 years in jail!!!
I remember this story.
This is why facial recognition is bullshit.
One of the hundred reasons
Damn, that’s the type of shit that makes one want to rob a bank just hearing about it
Rob a bank? Go to jail.
Don’t rob a bank? Beleive it or not, straight to jail
Shit like this sucks because it’s the taxpayers that get stuck with the bill. I’m so sick of these huge companies using taxpayers to pay for everything because they dont want to spend their vast fortunes. We see the same thing with huge tax write offs for building things with the promise of more trickle down benefits.
One of these cops is going to fuck with the wrong person, and instead of getting sued, they’ll get shot.
And all I will say to that is: if that happens, you want me on your jury.
There’s probably a reason why the copAI seems to lean towards women and grandmothers.
- Suspect 1 95% John Gunfinger
- Suspect 2 94% Mrs. Abuelita
Uhhhh better run that again…
- Suspect 1 95% Mrs. Abuelita
- Suspect 2 94% John Gunfinger.
OK, let’s take her down.
They are cowards after all. And they’re creepy stalker/abusers too.
