City Commissioner calls for immediate dismissal of Fargo police chief

FARGO (KVRR/KFGO) – Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn called the situation regarding understaffing of the police force, lack of leadership by Chief Dave Zibolski and other problems within the police department a “disaster.”

After another development, Piepkorn said it’s time for Zibolski to go.

“For me, public safety, that’s our number one job and if he’s intentionally putting our officers in danger we don’t have the luxury of time. This is happening right now. Literally, we are putting people’s lives in danger. It’s clear who the leader is that is making this happen. And so he’s gotta go immediately. He can either resign or we can fire him,” said Piepkorn.

Piepkorn’s demand came after an anonymous email was sent to City Commissioner Tony Gehrig on Tuesday, January 18. It claimed police officers didn’t respond to another officer’s call for assistance. Today, Gehrig provided the email to other commissioners and Mayor Tim Mahoney met immediately with the police chief.

“The chief was not aware of any incident in which an officer was alone and asked for help and did not get it. And so I told him to verify that, I want to have the incident reports for the last month and tell me if this was ever a deal. It’s his preliminary evaluation that’s not true. What should happen that we’ll talk about Monday night is we should have an outside service come in and look at what’s going on in our department,” Mahoney said.

Mahoney added that if it’s determined Zibolski is part of the problem, “it’s time for him to go.”

The next Fargo City Commission meeting is set for Monday.