LISTEN: West Fargo Police Chief Pete Nielsen’s conversation with Jay Thomas
LISTEN: Cass County Sheriff Jesse Jahner’s conversation with Jay Thomas
FARGO & WEST FARGO, N.D. – West Fargo Police Chief Pete Nielsen and Cass County Sheriff Jesse Jahner wish Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski would have had them be part of a press conference on the Angela Lipps case on Tuesday, March 24.
Nielsen said he was told the press conference would happen 45 minutes before it began.
Zibolski said he was not aware, nor were any others in his executive level, that West Fargo had any type of artificial intelligence facial recognition system.
“They, through their AI system, made that identification of Ms. Lipps and forwarded that information,” Zibolski said at the press conference “It’s not an identification, it’s a potential suspect, but they forwarded that information to our detectives, who then assumed, wrongly, that they had also sent in the surveillance photos with that photo ID.”
“Fargo Police Department requested this information from us and we sent them the information on Angela Lipps through AI. They requested it. For [Chief David Zibolski] to say that we did not send this information in North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center. It’s incorrect as well,” Nielsen said on “The Jay Thomas Show”.
Nielsen points out the AI software ND SLC uses, Clear View AI, is the same that West Fargo Police uses.
“What everyone’s probably looking for is for [Chief Zibolski] and Fargo to take responsibility for it and let’s just move on. Let’s figure out if there’s anything we can do to get better, but it doesn’t do any good to throw or place blame on any other agencies,” Jahner said on “The Jay Thomas Show”.
Zibolski sent Flag Family News the following statement when asked why Jahner and Nielsen weren’t part of the press conference:
“I want to acknowledge and apologize for not reaching out to Chief Nielsen sooner. I did call him about 60 minutes before the news conference to discuss what we planned to share with the community, but he was unavailable and I left a voicemail with that information, asking him to call me back.”
“My intention at the news conference was not to slight anyone or any other agency, but to be transparent about where our department made investigative errors. As I explained during the news conference, we should have conducted our own analysis of the information the West Fargo Police Department provided our agency from a potentially related case that was independent of our investigation. Since these were separate cases, we also should have independently verified the information we had in our possession through the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, rather than assuming that all relevant images we had in our investigation had already been reviewed by WFPD or NDSLIC as part of the West Fargo case. That oversight was on our part and not a reflection of the technology used, or the information shared by the West Fargo Police Department with our agency.”
“We are committed to being transparent about where we fell short and to improving our processes moving forward. I have since spoken with Chief Nielsen and personally apologized for not coordinating sooner, which led to this confusion.”
