An American grandmother was jailed for five months after a facial recognition program erroneously flagged her for bank fraud in a state she had never visited.
Angela Lipps, 50, from Tennessee, was first arrested at her rental home in July last year. She was then extradited to Fargo, North Dakota, more than 1,000 miles away from her home at the end of October, according to a GoFundMe campaign.
The West Fargo Police Department had used “facial recognition technology” that flagged Lipps as a potential suspect in a local fraud case, Dave Zibolski, the Fargo Police Department’s chief, told CNN. From there, his department took “additional investigative steps independent of AI to assist in identification” and confirm Lipps as a suspect.
He admitted at a press conference on Tuesday that the West Fargo police’s system was “part of the issue” in Lipps’ wrongful arrest.
The West Fargo Police Department told CNN that they use Clearview AI, which “identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps.”
Lipps was also detained in Tennessee for three months because the Cass County Sheriff’s Office apparently neglected to tell North Dakota authorities that they had her extradition waiver, the outlet reported.
Lipps said that her relocation to North Dakota was “the first time I had ever been on an airplane.” She added it was the first, and last, time she will ever step foot in the Peace Garden State.
By that point, Lipps was “terrified and exhausted and humiliated,” she wrote on the GoFundMe, but the end still wasn’t in sight.
Once the grandmother finally touched down in Fargo, she was provided with a lawyer, who obtained bank records proving that she had been in Tennessee during the time of the fraud the department linked her to.
“It took five minutes for the whole thing to fall apart. Five minutes,” Lipps wrote on the fundraiser.
On Dec. 23, just over five months since Lipps’ arrest, a Fargo detective, the state’s attorney, and a judge “mutually agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice to allow for further investigation,” Fargo police told the outlet.
Lipps was released on Christmas Eve, but was still trapped between a rock and a hard place.
During the five months she was in custody, Lipps’ reputation was tarnished, her rental home was gone, and all of her belongings were seized when her storage unit bill went unpaid, she claimed in the GoFundMe.
“I am not the same woman I was. I don’t think I ever will be,” Lipps wrote.
The fundraiser cleared $68,000 on Sunday, March 29.
Zibolski assured that the Fargo Police Department will no longer be “sending or utilizing information” from West Fargo’s Clearview AI because “it’s their own system, we don’t know how it’s run or how it’s overseen.”
Zibolski added that all facial recognition identifications will also be shared with the department’s Investigation Division commander on a monthly basis, “so that we can keep a closer eye on this evolving technology.”
He admitted that the department should’ve submitted surveillance photos associated with the fraud cases to the relevant agencies trained in facial recognition.
