Angela Lipps, of Elizabethton, Tennessee, filed the federal lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in North Dakota against the City of Fargo and former Fargo Police Department Detective Lucas Heck.
Fargo police investigated the thefts, and Heck received facial recognition results from a West Fargo police analyst and North Dakota’s state intelligence center suggesting Lipps was a possible lead.
The lawsuit says West Fargo police did not believe the facial recognition results were strong enough on their own to bring charges.
According to the lawsuit, Lipps was arrested at gunpoint at a neighbor’s home in Tennessee on July 14, 2025, by a U.S.
The suit accuses the Fargo Police Department of having no policy, training, or supervision governing officers’ use of facial recognition technology at the time, unlike the West Fargo Police Department, which restricts the tool to specially trained officers and prohibits arrests based solely on a facial recognition match.