Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski presents 2025 crime statistics.
FARGO (KFGO) – The Fargo Police Department released the 2025 crime report and say crime is down in the city by 10%.
Chief Dave Zibolski says there were 298 fewer burglaries, 83 fewer aggravated assaults and 52 fewer rapes. He credits technology, the community and well-trained officers.
“Our real-time crime center, which has been a real game changer in terms of our ability to solve crime either faster or solve crime that we may not have even saw previously because of that intelligence information,” Zibolski explains. “Our utilization of the traffic safety team and getting them out in terms of traffic enforcement, our community’s assistance in a lot of these investigations and just some really good police work.”
Although crime is down, the department received more calls for service overall. Zibolski credits that to traffic stops by the newly implemented traffic safety team.
Chief Zibolski brought up two additional areas of concern that, he says, use a significant amount of the department’s time and resources.
Drug overdoses continue to be a major concern. Zibolski says his officers responded to the most overdoses since the data started being tracked more than five years ago. There were 169 reported drug overdoses resulting in 29 deaths last year.
“We focus a lot on violent crime and that’s good, but we still have a significant drug addiction issue when you have 29 people that are killed in one year as a result of an overdose,” Zibolski said. “We focus a lot on narcotics, but somehow the stuff is still getting into our community and being utilized. There has to be something significant on the ‘how do you treat addiction’ side of the house.”
The department also set a record with officers responding to more than 4,353 mental health-related calls. Zibolski says a more permanent or long-term solution is needed for those suffering from chronic mental health issues.
“We really need some help with that in our Fargo area because our officers deal with this routinely and regularly,” Zibolski said. “Not good for them, not good for the people who suffer from these mental health issues, not good for the community who deals with some of this and when we talk about fear and crime and all that, has also an adverse effect on their perception.”
Though overall crime was down, two categories where the numbers spiked were shoplifting and theft of motor vehicle parts and accessories.
Zibolski says they uncovered a large “chop shop” operation which, unfortunately didn’t result in any criminal charges.
The Chief says more still needs to be done when it comes to re-offenders and criminals serving proper jail time.
“I would like to see more prosecutions on some of these cases and I would like to see sentences that were doled out, served. There’s a case for reintegration into a community for someone who’s committed a crime, and that’s fine, but it seems, at least from our perspective, we’re seeing some of the same people way too soon. They have a longer sentence but they’re out in a much shorter time and then they’re involved in other violent incidents. Specifically from that violent crime perspective, I think more should be done.”
The 2025 report and additional crime statistics are available online at FargoPolice.com/CrimeStats.
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