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.
I wish it was acceptable to include parentheses in a sentence. I had to read the headline a couple of times to figure out a facial recognition mistake did not directly launch a $10M lawsuit. The grandma did.
Welcome to the future, you don’t have to be afraid if you didn’t do anything wrong.
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.
Everybody in that chain should be dragged into civil court
Agreed.
It’s “funny” how they never call it “AI” in these kinds of fail tales.
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.
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.
really need to tie these judgement payout to the police pensions, see how quickly they acrually start policing their own
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.
If you want something that engages with the idea of “an Orwellian surveillance state ruled over by something that isn’t actually AGI, but which pretends to be fair and just, and which dispenses immediate justice in the form of weapons of bodily destruction”, just watch psycho-pass, which is actually good.
Holy shit that movie sounds like hot garbage
It was, lol
Thats probably what my brain was referencing.
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
10 Million seems low to me. Cars and homes can be replaced: pets and neighbors and community cannot be replaced, they are priceless.
No. This is how you arrive at a society where most people can’t afford insurance.
A person that is wrongly incarcerated should of course be compensated for their financial losses plus a certain amount for the pain caused. But the compansation still needs to be within reason. Otherwise, insurance will skyrocket.
I mean, it already did in the US. For this exact reason. But I’d note that most countries do not give exorbiant payouts. It’s not normal and not good.
Or: If the loss of a pet is priceless, why stop at $10m, or indeed why compensate at all?
Did you even read the article? She was treated horrifically. Arrested at gunpoint in front of the children she was babysitting. Held in jail for 6 months and then taken to North Dakota 1200 miles from her home before someone even bothered to look into her alibi. She was left on the side of the street outside the jail IN NORTH DAKOTA 1200 MILES FROM WHERE SHE LIVED WITH NO MONEY OR COAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER.
She lost her home and her pet. Without the home she can’t babysit, so no livelihood. Unless there’s someone to house her and get her back on her feet, the state just took someone living a normal life and made them broke and homeless. If your primary concern is insurance rates, fuck you. Fuck you because none of this has a chance of increasing ANYONES insurance because insurance is not paying her lawsuit.
Yep. She was treated horribly. How about the responsible people are held accountable and actually go to jail, rather than this insane bullshit that just feeds the suing rat race?
The solution is to require all law enforcement and justice employees to have liability insurance similar to malpractice insurance. After a couple of serious mistakes they wont be able to get insurance and therefore will no longer endanger the public.
nah, just take the judgements out of their pension fund. would see huge internal crackdown on the “bad apples” then, i imagine
Except there is no precedent for that. Liability/malpractice insurance has been around for quite a while and there would be very little chance that law enforcement/justice could argue it wasn’t ‘fair’.
Fuck you, the price for unjustly denying someone freesome (freedom) should be prohibitively expensive to deter these type of mistakes.
Community and all that other bullshit is absolutely replaceable. The one thing you actually cannot replace is time, those 6monta are lost and gone due to lazy ignorant police actions. You don’t make the consequences leas painful, you either find a method that is not as flawed as automated AI or suffer the consequences of denying innocent citizens their freedom.
Hey, fuck you too. How about those responsible go to fucking jail, rather than offloading the burden on the public?
the price doesnt deter them cause it’s not the police that pay for it. tie payputs like these to police pension funds if you want to see how quick they could actually fix this stuff themselves
Insurance gets cheaper with the right plumber!
Are you speaking about that one trick that insurance companies hate?
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?
Doesn’t a judge or DA or someone have to approve charges? Was it really all left up to one guy’s shot judgement?
the only scale any of these chucklefucks use
Yeah, but they closed a case!!
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
Yes.
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
50 year old grandma? Hoo boy.
Have a kid at 25 -> kid has kid at 25
I do not see the problem. You could bump both of those down to 20 and she’d have a 10y/o grandkid. Multiple grandkids even.
E: Aside from all that, teen pregnancy happens, and while it’s not ideal it also doesn’t make the mother some kind of untouchable pariah.
