Facial Recognition Error Jails Innocent Grandmother For Months (theguardian.com) 144
Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the Guardian: Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software, according to south-east North Dakota news outlet InForum. Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the crimes. Lipps, a mother of three and grandmother of five, said she has lived most of her life in north-central Tennessee. She had never been on an airplane until authorities flew her to North Dakota last year to face charges.
In July, U.S. marshals arrested Lipps at her Tennessee home while she was babysitting four children. She said she was taken away at gunpoint and booked into a county jail as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota. "I've never been to North Dakota, I don't know anyone from North Dakota," Lipps told WDAY News. She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail while awaiting extradition. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft.
According to Fargo police records obtained by WDAY News, detectives investigating bank fraud cases in April and May 2025 reviewed surveillance video of a woman using a fake U.S. army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars. The officers allegedly used facial recognition software to identify the suspect as Lipps. A detective reportedly wrote in court documents that Lipps appeared to match the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle. Lipps told WDAY News that no one from the Fargo police department contacted her before the arrest. Lipps is now back home but says the experience has had lasting consequences. While jailed and unable to pay bills, Lipps lost her home, her car and her dog, she said. She also told WDAY News no one from the Fargo police department had apologized.
In July, U.S. marshals arrested Lipps at her Tennessee home while she was babysitting four children. She said she was taken away at gunpoint and booked into a county jail as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota. "I've never been to North Dakota, I don't know anyone from North Dakota," Lipps told WDAY News. She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail while awaiting extradition. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft.
According to Fargo police records obtained by WDAY News, detectives investigating bank fraud cases in April and May 2025 reviewed surveillance video of a woman using a fake U.S. army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars. The officers allegedly used facial recognition software to identify the suspect as Lipps. A detective reportedly wrote in court documents that Lipps appeared to match the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle. Lipps told WDAY News that no one from the Fargo police department contacted her before the arrest. Lipps is now back home but says the experience has had lasting consequences. While jailed and unable to pay bills, Lipps lost her home, her car and her dog, she said. She also told WDAY News no one from the Fargo police department had apologized.
Josef K says... (Score:3)
told ya so.
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Re: Josef K says... (Score:2)
Because with this administration 25 is too old.
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Huh???? She's 50 not 30 lol. How old do you think women should wait to have children?
I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't say "defund the police" because we do need to police and people who enforce the law, but I will say fuck those guys for not doing their job even at the most basic level. I hope she gets payout in the seven figure range for this malpractice.
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Do we need police? This country didn't always have them, and they began life as an institution as slavecatchers.
I hope someday people aren't saying "well, I won't say 'defund TSA', because we need them."
Re:I hope (Score:5, Interesting)
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We saw what happened to areas where the residents drove police out like this [wikipedia.org]. Vandalism, looting, shootings, etc. Store shelves cleared out by criminals. It very quickly became unlivable until the police reclaimed it.
So, yes, we need police. And we need to hold the police accountable when they harm us.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Informative)
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Your local sheriff and crew is significantly different then federal immigration officers. For one, most local sheriffs are elected. Two, the funding is very different. Three, most cops at least live in the same state, if not the same county, as the department they work in.
Smaller the town, the more likely you will know the individual police officers.
It's really an apples to oranges comparison.
The rest of your post though, yes I agree. No immunity and we definitely need a balance. Honestly, we need MORE poli
Re:I hope (Score:4, Insightful)
In 1790, the US population was 94.9% rural. There is no country. in the world today that rural -- Burundi, which looks like blanks spot in the world at night satellite picturs, is 88% rural.
The largest city at the time was New York, with a population of 33,000. Northern Manhattan was near-wilderness, mid-town was farms and country houses.
In 1790 the US was. country you could "police" with sheriffs and volunteer posses, largely to keep the peace. If you got robbed, you hired a private thief catcher. This works in a 95% rural country with just 3.4 million inhabitants. It would be chaos in a country 87x larger.
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It's not like we didn't have police, just not what we think of as a modern police force. We had organized law enforcement consisting of sheriffs and constables, with the power to deputize when needed.
This is much the same as we didn't have organized fire brigades, instead we had government officials with the power to organize a response to fires by recruiting more manpower from the populace to fight fires.
Asking if we need a police force because we didn't previously have one is like asking if we need a fire
Re:I hope (Score:5, Interesting)
Do we need police? This country didn't always have them, and they began life as an institution as slavecatchers.
False. Modern policing arose from European practices and theories and law enforcement predecessors, not fugitive slave catchers. In terms of intellectual forebeers, think of, for example Bentham and the panopticon. And, to be fair, it's an oft-repeated false claim, so you're not unique in saying it. Your statement has become another way in which slavery is identified as the original American sin (and other sins flow from that original sin).
In the United States, I would say the most important person in forming the modern constabulary was August Vollmer. Vollmer was highly influenced by Continental philosophies on policing and criminology.I love the idea that a someone who was never a police officer himself rose to become the police chief of Berkeley and L.A. (and in fact launched the Criminal Justice studies program at Berkeley. Imagine that--Berkeley as the intellectual heart of policing in America!). Vollmer is a fascinating guy. He basically single handedly solved the "trolley problem" by jumping onto an out of control car and applying the brakes.
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Hah! That's going down as one of my favorite clunkers.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we need police? This country didn't always have them, and they began life as an institution as slavecatchers.
Yes, we need people who enforce the law. There is good evidence that laws, and appropriate law enforcement makes a difference in reducing unwanted behaviors (such as auto theft).
Laws and law enforcement are not the ONLY things, obviously, that reduce crime. Having a good job, affordable housing, good nutrition, clean water, good schools, etc. all matter too. But laws and law enforcement are part of that puzzle.
What we DON'T need are a bunch of macho, cosplaying, psychopath, racist, bigoted, power-hungry zealots who are immune from the consequences of their actions.
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Good post. If only we could get something like that from ANY of our media.
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Where did this lie come from and why are people still repeating it?
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I never heard of it, but it sure sounds like something a retard would say.
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Do we need police? This country didn't always have them, and they began life as an institution as slavecatchers.
Prior to police we had something worse: vigilante justice. Every stable rational nation has police. It's uniquely American among western nations that they act as horribly as they do, so why not address what is wrong rather than abolishing them outright?
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https://inquest.org.uk/news-an... [inquest.org.uk]
https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a problem everywhere and of all time.
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We REALLY need to defund TSA. It's literally a jobs program for people that would otherwise be working retail. On top of that, it's pure security theater. There to look like government is doing something as a response to 9-1-1. Of course, that's just was just an excuse to do this to us.
So yeah, FUCK the TSA. Defund away.
Also, the police are really there for white women. That's about it. As you mention, we didn't have police at one point. Not sure if that would work in today's society, since cities are way t
Re:I hope (Score:4, Informative)
> they began life as an institution as slavecatchers
I've heard this claimed by some on the left for a while now and there appears to be no basis for it whatsoever. It's an extremely parochial theory that ignores the rest of the world, even though police became a thing when America was a third-tier nation well behind the likes of Britain and France in terms of power, influence, and innovation.
Policing was, for the most part, in its modern form, started by Robert Peel [wikipedia.org], who had to deal with a country that had no organized police force (with only 450 constables in London, for example) and various conflicting law enforcers with varying jurisdictions. As Home Secretary, Peel created the Metropolitan Police for London, which over time formed a blueprint for creating other regional police forces across the UK. This in turn was highly influenced by the French Gendarme.
Peel set standards for policing [wikipedia.org] based upon early enthusiastic employees of the new found Met, which alas aren't followed by many forces outside of the UK today with rates of crime rather than arrest metrics being used to determine success or failure.
That blueprint found its way across to many English speaking countries including the United States, where it was copied as the model for city-based policing. The US had already copied the earlier, Sheriff based, system the UK used for generic law enforcement outside of cities, and that continues today despite being more or less phased out in the UK. Sheriffs predate the formation of the United States.
Slave catchers? Not really. Aside from anything else, the model isn't remotely similar. Slave catchers didn't patrol the streets looking for slaves to commit slave things. They weren't employed by governments either. They ran targetted operations similar to modern day bounty hunters. Indeed, modern day bounty hunters probably do owe at least some of their operational history to slave catchers.
We can have an intelligent debate on how to reform policing without pretending it has something to do with a barely related profession whose only connection, arguably, was the use of metal shackles to restrain prisoners. That just undermines your argument.
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Re:I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to qualified immunity. You can't do shit against the police even if they straight up murder you.
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Welcome to qualified immunity. You can't do shit against the police even if they straight up murder you.
Qualified Immunity protects the officer from personal civil liability. It doesn't protect the department or municipality from said liability, nor does it protect the officer from criminal liability. While it is certainly problematic, it's not the bogeyman you're making it out to be.
Re: I hope (Score:2)
Isn't it a problem though, that the individuals who made the very avoidable and life-changing mistakes won't suffer consequences? I mean in general people should have some kind of protection for what they do during paid work. But too much protection means certain bad people don't even care, which is not a good outcome.
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Just because they can't be sued doesn't mean their heads won't roll. Lawsuits != justice, that's just a lie the ambulance chasers tell.
Re:I hope (Score:5, Informative)
"Defund the police" doesn't mean to shut down all policing. It means to redistribute some of the many duties we heap on the police to other, more qualified, groups. For example, police shouldn't be required to mediate a domestic dispute on their own. There should be someone available we the training to do that, perhaps accompanied by the police, but in any event capable on their own to handle it. In this case, police should be a second resort. "Defund the police" means let the police focus on law enforcement and fund accordingly.
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(I say this as a progressive that entirely agrees with the position of reforming police tactics and organizational stru
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But if the slogan doesn't mean what it *literally* means then it's not a very good slogan.
That's been my problem with the "Defund the police" bullshit from the beginning. It's a crap slogan that doesn't reflect what my progressive brethren want. I'm sure you can find some left-wing nutters that truly want all LEO gone, but that opinion isn't representative of the platform and should be ignored. (Just like there are plenty of people on the Right to ignore. I'm sure most people on the Conservative side don't think Cletus's opinion on being able to marry his 16-year-old 1st cousin are representat
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> I'm sure you can find some left-wing nutters that truly want all LEO gone
Not just some. Here’s the NYT in 2020:
“Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
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Definitely counter productive, both in intent and in practice. But that “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police” article? It was in the NYT, the nation’s paper of record - and it wasn’t an isolated sentiment, plus actual follow through frequently occurred that was usually accompanied by a dramatic backfire.
(The article is also clear evidence of heavy influence by Critical Theorists that are ubiquitous in soft science academia - plus Ivy League trained NYT reporters. The article is
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It's only when their statements are exposed as absurd, stupid, or evil, that they start saying they didn't really mean what they meant.
I would argue that the problem starts when when a collection of wildly varying opinions and statements get distilled into a stupid slogan. It is then exacerbated when those opposed take the stupid slogan, discount all of the array of opinions that lead to it's inception, and pretend the stupid slogan represents the entirety of what the monolithic "them" want. Then things devolve to a point where you have two sides that aren't even operating on the same level of understanding of what the other side even wan
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For example, police shouldn't be required to mediate a domestic dispute on their own.
So they need to be there anyway, in addition to someone else? So we're going to take away funding from the police to give to that someone else, but the police still have to do the same work?
Or does "defund the police" actually mean the exact opposite of what you advocate, which is spending more on additional services?
Does that actually make sense to you?
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So they need to be there anyway, in addition to someone else?
Instead of sending two squads with two officers each you send a squad with two Law Enforcement Officers and a squad with two [whatever you want to call the other group] Officers.
Or does "defund the police" actually mean the exact opposite of what you advocate, which is spending more on additional services?
No. It means utilizing existing resources more effectively. We've already got a budget for a hundred hand tools. Instead of buying a hundred hammers, maybe buy a couple of screwdrivers and wrenches to throw into the mix. And no, I'm not implying cops are tools. And no, I'm not advocating firing LEOs to replace them with Feeling En
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Instead of sending two squads with two officers each you send a squad with two Law Enforcement Officers and a squad with two [whatever you want to call the other group] Officers.
It is exceedingly rare for police calls to involve more than one car, and they usually go alone. And if more than one does show up, it's almost certainly something that is already violent, and definitely a police situation, not a social worker situation.
So your scenario is stupid.
Try again, with some connection to real life.
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So your scenario is stupid.
Fine. You don't like my "multiple officer responding" scenario. How about some real data. There were 265,579 service calls. How many of those would be better handled by someone whose training concentrated on handling social needs?
not a social worker situation.
This is where the communication breaks down. Who said "social worker"? I sure didn't. My scenario is still police officers. Hence the "[whatever you want to call the other group] Officers" comment. Most major police forces have a contingent of officers who receive additional d
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So your scenario is stupid.
Fine. You don't like my "multiple officer responding" scenario.
Since it has no connection to the real world, it's nothing more than a pointless attempt to divert attention from the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about.
How about some real data. There were 265,579 service calls. How many of those would be better handled by someone whose training concentrated on handling social needs?
Irrelevant to the fact that when you say "defund the police" you really mean "don't reduce funding to the police at all, but add other services that the taxpayers have to pay for."
That kind of lie is why normal people don't take lefties seriously. Because you're either drooling stupid, mentally deranged, or simply lying every time your lip
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Since it has no connection to the real world
I literally drove past a scene this week. Random house in the suburbs with two cop cars parked in front of it. One of the cops standing out front leaning against his car looking bored. But yeah, whatever, every call is one cop, one car. Every time. No exceptions. No possible reason you'd ever want a second unit onsite, even for "boring" things like a medical emergency.
Irrelevant to the fact that when you say "defund the police"
First, I've never said the phrase "defund the police" in any context other than discussions like this, explaining why it's a dumb statement.
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So they need to be there anyway, in addition to someone else? So we're going to take away funding from the police to give to that someone else, but the police still have to do the same work?
WTF? No.
The police have to do a lot of jobs they are not very good at at a cost that's considerably higher than the people who are good at it.
A sensible person making a financially sound decision would spend less on the police and use the money saved more efficiently. Maybe even save money over all. But really, fiscal re
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I hope they also sue the data broker companies whose data was used to finger her.
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It is the only job I know of that you are hired to enforce what you don't know or understand.
Remember the lawyer (DA) is the one who knows the laws, the police guess and figure if it affects their authority then it is illegal.
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the lawyer (DA) is the one who knows the laws
That's very generous of you,from what I've seen I'm not quite so optimistic.
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They can sue the city. Qualified immunity covers all of the others. At best they might be able to sue whatever company made the facial recognition system, but that'd be a stretch if the latter shows it was misused.
Re: I hope (Score:2)
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any even remotely competent lawyer
From rural Tennessee she probably couldn't afford a "remotely competent lawyer" and had to rely on Public Defender's office, which almost certainly told her to try to plea bargain a relatively low penalty no matter if they thought she did it or not.
With 16 years setting up and maintaining physical security systems I can confidently say that most security camera video is crap and absolutely not a valid image to submit to facial recognition software.
Facial recognition software doesn't actually match an image
Re: I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with all those "setting an example" punishments is that they themselves can also be flawed, and instead of sending a warning, they send the message that the system can not be trusted. And then, nobody cares about justice at all, because it is arbitrary anyway.
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How about throw them in jail for a while, let's say.... about 6 months. Ah fuck it, lets double it for the criminal negligence displayed.
Re: I hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Treble damages for law enforcement which do not care for putting someone in jail for no reason.
Which means 18 months in jail, and why not have them pay triple the equity she lost for her house.
Qualified immunity has been repealed in some states and should be repealed at the federal level. There just too much abuse because of it. See ICE murders as examples of where qualified immunity has lead us.
I'm a bit concerned that the federal government agents can get away with ignoring court orders repeatedly. The only fix is going to be for congress to pass strong reforms for stricter government accountability when the rights of innocent individuals are being ignored.
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I'd ask for millions in a lawsuit. You need to deter them from allowing this to happen again and make an example of them.
You can't get back time, plus all the stress, lawyers, etc... over a guesstimate allegation from some company's software?
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You can set examples, just don't make them finite. It's fun seeing the tortured to death example here, I was just reading the Ticketmaster story above and I thought a fitting punishment would be a class action which entitles every member of a class to publicaly remove a pubic hair with tweezers for every $1 they were screwed by the CEO.
So yes, let's torture these people. But not to death. If it turns out we got the wrong person we could always ... not apologize.
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On the one hand, we have an agent of the government acting under the color of law and involuntarily incarcerating someone due to the agent's (at best) gross negligence.
On the other hand, we have someone voluntarily entering into a contract with a company and receiving exactly what they agreed to at exactly the price they agreed to. The customer obviously believed that the value they received from their purchase, at a minimum, matched what they paid and, more likely, exceeded what they paid (else they would
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That's how they would have settled it in the old days.
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Even allowing for qualified immunity, since those officers acted as a part of their jobs rather than in their individual capacities (from what we know), those officers should be severely disciplined, if not dishonorably discharged from their jobs
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Police ignore their own failures (Score:5, Insightful)
It also reveals the stupidity of automatically escalating a crime to a federal 'level' because the alleged criminal crossed a state border.
It's interesting that no-one is talking about prosecuting the police for very real suffering: One hopes she hires a skilled lawyer to seek damages.
Re:Police ignore their own failures (Score:5, Interesting)
The underlying problem is that the laws protect the police so long as they *think* they are doing their duty. So it is almost impossible to bring a case against them.
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Another important reason to sue the city rather than the individuals is that the city has a much greater capacity to pay.
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Re:Police ignore their own failures (Score:4, Interesting)
The judge who issued the warrant is paid way more than those cops ... enough blame to go around, but the judge should get most of it.
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THIS...very much THIS. As a former DSO, we were forced to do STUPID shit by some judge sitting on his bench with his head up his arse far too often. That doesn't excuse the lazy incompetence of the Fargo PD in this case.
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In order to sue the government you have to ask for permission.... from the government.
Abandoned by everyone (Score:2)
"a mother of three and grandmother of five" yet she missed payments. No-one could step in???
Re:Abandoned by everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Abandoned by everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
If you live paycheck to paycheck you can't suddenly start paying a second mortgage.
Re:Abandoned by everyone (Score:5, Informative)
First, not everyone keeps their financial affairs well-organized. For every person that has a neatly-labeled box of file folders, there's one who has thrown important papers into random boxes along with old newspapers, magazines, and junk mail. LOTS of random boxes. So merely trying to answer the question "What accounts does this person have?" takes a lot of work and a lot of time -- and even if that work's done carefully, it might still result in omissions.
Second, some people keep their financial affairs on a computer/online, which means that someone trying to help has to work through all that -- all the security, all the ID verification, all processes, all the bureaucracy, everything. This can be brutally difficult: it means hours and hours on hold with customer service departments that want to avoid doing anything resembling service. It means endless letter exchanges. It means retaining an attorney and getting documents notarized. It means sending things overnight recipient-signature required and then being told they never arrived. It means filling out forms and submitting them only to find out that they're the wrong forms -- even though they were the ones you were told to submit.
Third, it means dealing with people whose only goal is to get your problem off their desk and out of their queue -- so they'll close help desk tickets without bothering to ask if the problem is actually solved or even bothering to inform you. (When you call back, you'll be told that no such ticket exists. When you insist, they'll tell you that it was resolved and thus closed.) If you somehow manage to get past this, you'll be told things like "our anti-fraud procedures prevent you from paying your grandmother's electric bill" -- yes, really. Or -- and I'm not making this up -- "we need to talk to your mother directly". Oh? My mom? The one whose death certificate I sent you four months ago? The one whose leftover $2.17 cable bill I'm trying to pay so that I can close the account and never have to speak to you again? That one?!
I could rant about this for pages, but the bottom line: trying to step in and handle someone's financial affairs is a full-time job. It requires constant attention, endless phone calls and letters, and a mountain of work.
Re: Abandoned by everyone (Score:2)
My favorite example is when the insurance company told me Iâ(TM)d need to submit a Power of Attorney form signed by the deceased person to allow me to cancel insurance on property that had been sold during probate.
Thankfully I knew enough to say âoethat is not how that works, what you want is the letters testamentaryâ, but this happened with at least one insurance company and one bank.
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Sometimes it's really hard not to consider these people NPCs whose script doesn't include the concept of death for some inane reason.
Re: Abandoned by everyone (Score:2)
What do you aim to achieve with this comment? This is the most literal case of "blaming the victim" I can think of. There are things to be outraged about in this story. The character of the victim, or of her family, is irrelevant to the injustice that person suffered.
The real issue with AI (Score:5, Insightful)
This shows the real issue with AI. It isn't in the AI itself, but the people using it. I don't have an issue with them using AI to try and identify the suspect when they are having a hard time doing so. But you can't just take what AI says and assume it is correct and act on it. AI is a tool and needs to be used as such. When it gives you something, it is up to the people to actually check out what it says and follow up on it. People are using AI as if it is the answer but it is just a tool to try and get to the real answer and that is the part that people are ignoring.
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You heard about this kind of stuff happening in the US before AI. You're a police state - the police act with impunity like this, destroying innocent people's lives and facing no consequences. You should remind all those legal gun owners of their responsibility to overthrow the tyrants.
Re:The real issue with AI (Score:4, Insightful)
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It seems one of the problems is new technology is used without verification and validation
Yep. Here's my recent example. My state has a turnpike that recently switch to cash-less tolling, where if you don't have a transponder in your car they take a photo of the license plate, look up the address for it, and mail you a bill. I have a transponder in my vehicle and a card for payment on file so I should never receive a bill in the mail, but I did. The tag reported was for my trailer, which I hadn't pulled on the turnpike in quite a while. Besides, a trailer doesn't get its own bill; it's bill
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Re: The real issue with AI (Score:2)
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With over a decade and a half of work in physical security I could probably count on two hands and one foot the number of security cameras that I've seen which give a good enough image that they could reliably be fed into a facial recognition system and get a valid result. They almost certainly fed an inadequate image into the software and declared the case solved.
Even past crimminals should have rights (Score:5, Interesting)
AI is hardly the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem was the police requestion and the judge issuing a fugitive warrant based on shit evidence. They should realise the impact and have some common sense. Even if she did it she wasn't a flight risk, this did not protect evidence. She wasn't going to flee to Mexico with this amount of money. If she was a mule, doing the detective work while she was free would have been better.
Lack of human intelligence as always the biggest problem.
Re:AI is hardly the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
A pity... (Score:5, Insightful)
S O _ M A N Y _ W R O N G S (Score:3)
I don't know where to start:
trolling electronic DBs without suspicion? (Laws were written for individual search)
Interstate trolling DBs by non-TN acredited LEOs?
Issuing arrest warrents without any corroboarating evidence?
acting on a warrent without any checking?
Other?
Mistakes will happen, you are guaranteeing more if they are not effectively prevented and ultimately punished.
LEOs are all about seeing people punished for mistakes. They must accept same for their own.
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LEOs don't punish people. Courts do. LEOs merely deliver people to courts when it is required.
There was a court order involved here. Judge decided she should be extradited. Not LEO.
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BOTH.
SUE SUE SUE!! (Score:2)
Please someone tell me a good hearted lawyer has taken on her case?
Police like this... (Score:3)
Police like facial recognition because it gives them lots of "suspects" without much effort.
They can then arrest someone and get points for the arrest.
They don't really care if they have the right person or not. It's the arrest that counts. There isn't any penalty for arresting the wrong person.
Picking out wrong suspect (Score:2)
It's not that uncommon that people finger a wrong person in the line sadly. Machines are way more reliable than people in this, but this still happens.
But "let suspect sit in jail for five months and we don't even interview her when she has clear alibi" is the level of dereliction of duty that surely should lead to revocation of qualified immunity for whoever was responsible for being held this long without even a hearing, much less a trial?
Granted, that's going to be up to the judge, but the case seems utt
Sounds like Granma just got a free retirement fund (Score:2)
Sue the pants off of them. Wrongful arrest AND wrongful imprisonment for that length of time should garner several million dollars.
Not one joke . . . (Score:2)
. . . about the subject being facial recognition and her name being Lipps? Who are you people and what have you done with the actual Slashdot?
Wild guess (Score:2)
I am going to guess that, initially, she declined a lawyer, thinking that she did not need one: foolishly thinking that the "system would work" and that the police would quickly see their mistake and let her out. Having initially denied needing a lawyer, she wasn't given another opportunity until she was extradited to North Dakota.
You always need a lawyer. Police routinely lie to people in custody -- lying is the primary interrogation technique.
Don't forget what happened to Jason Killinger (Score:2)
south-east North Dakota (Score:2)
Found that funny.
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The actual reason police can't apologize for these any more is legal precedent. Apology will be used in court as admission of guilt. So they can't apologize until the case is tried or settled.
This is a case of well intended protections in some areas leading to very bad second order effects elsewhere.
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This is a case of well intended protections
This is a case of total fucking incompetence.
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And if it was, it is grounds for revocation of qualified immunity.
Considering that this case went at the absolute minimum before TWO different judges in two different jurisdictions, I suspect that this in fact was something else.
A problem with the system, where this woman was a catastrophic failure case. Which is why no one dares to issue an apology, because an apology would be seen as admission of guilt by that specific organization.
Meanwhile, there are at least two police/sheriff departments and at least
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A problem with the system, where this woman was a catastrophic failure case.
You seem intent on protecting/making up excuses for all those involved in this clear case of total fucking incompetence.
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So let me see if I get this right. Because I'm intent on identifying THE ACTUAL CAUSE, "I'm protecting/making excuses for all involved".
Your type is the reason why we can't have the nice things.