The City Commission of Fargo has unanimously approved a new chief of police.
Travis Stefonowicz has worked at the department for over 25 years and has served as interim chief for a little over a month, replacing Dave Zibolski following his retirement.
City leaders were initially going to wait to appoint a permanent chief until new commissioners are elected in June. But Stefonowicz himself asked them to speed up the process, according to Mayor Tim Mahoney.
"Stefonowicz came around and talked to different commissioners,” he said. “He expressed that he would like to do some things, but he's handicapped a little bit if he made changes … in assignments, if he changed command structure, that maybe the new chief would change that."
A letter signed by members of the police department endorsed Stefanowicz for the permanent role last month. Three finalists were chosen by the city, but two withdrew from consideration, leaving Stefonowicz the lone finalist to be interviewed by the city’s selection committee last week.
He’s inheriting a scandal that grabbed national headlines earlier this year. The department used artificial intelligence to identify and arrest Angela Lipps in connection with a case of bank fraud. She said she’d never been to North Dakota. After spending five months in jail, her lawyer obtained bank records that put her in Tennessee at the time of the crime. Her charges were then dropped.
In an interview with MPR News last month, then-Interim Chief Stefonowicz said there’s a learning curve to using AI, and the department has to embrace it or risk falling behind.
The department introduced new guardrails to using AI last month when Zibolski apologized to the community for errors made during the investigation.
The case is still active, and Mayor Tim Mahoney said Monday that he thinks it will be resolved in the “next couple of weeks.”
“We'll figure out what truly happened, and (if an) apology is necessary, we'll make that apology,” he said.
