Fargo selects 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."

For his part, Stefonowicz told MPR News that those conversations began as a way to introduce himself to the commission directly, and he expressed to them the difficulties of having a temporary leader call the shots.

“I've been in that position before, where my schedule has changed or something has changed, and that changed not only for me at work, but for my family,” he said. “That's really important to me, so I just wanted to make sure that they understood that those were some of the things that we would be battling moving forward.”

Calls for Stefonowicz to be chief of police rolled in shortly after he took on the interim position. Fargo City Commissioner Michelle Turnberg recommended he get the job and 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.

Stefonowicz said Tuesday he’s not able to comment on the case because of “ongoing legal processes.” But he confirmed the department is still using AI.

“Artificial intelligence in a responsible use case is fantastic,” he said. “People don't realize that they're using it every day. So, we're going to continue to use artificial intelligence in a responsible manner. It's an efficiency-type thing in many different ways.”

In an interview with MPR News last month, 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 when Zibolski apologized to the community for errors made during the investigation. Stefonowicz said Tuesday that those guardrails are still in place.

Mayor Tim Mahoney said this week that he thinks the Angela Lipps case will be resolved in the “next couple of weeks.”

“We'll figure out what truly happened,” he said. He added that if an apology is necessary, “We'll make that apology.”

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