Shooting that killed Fargo officer nearly triples city’s worker safety insurance (2025)

FARGO — The city of Fargo faced an unspeakable tragedy when a gunman opened fire and killed a young officer almost two years ago.

Through no fault of its own, the city now has to foot a massive workers' safety insurance bill because of the shooting.

The workers' compensation premium for Fargo more than tripled after the July 14, 2023, shooting that killed 23-year-old Officer Jake Wallin and seriously injured Officers Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes. Mohamad Barakat, 37, of Fargo, opened fire on officers as they responded to an unrelated crash at 25th Street and Ninth Avenue South.

Contributed / City of Fargo

Officer Zach Robinson shot and killed Barakat, ending the rampage and potentially preventing a mass shooting at the Downtown Fargo Street Fair, according to authorities.

The city had low workers' compensation premiums in previous years, Fargo Chief Communications Officer Gregg Schildberger said. Because of the shooting, Fargo's annual cost to cover the safety insurance will increase from $230,311 last year to $712,965 this year.

"Our organization will now be undergoing a handful of years with a high experience rate due to the incident of July 14, 2023," Schildberger said in a statement. "FPD Officers Dotas and Hawes received tremendous care and are back on duty today as a testament to the coverage received following the incident. The City of Fargo would gladly remit an even higher premium if it meant Officer Jake Wallin was still with us today."

Fargo isn't alone. The Mercer County Commission found out in January that its premium will go up $48,000 because Deputy Paul Martin was killed in a crash while trying to stop a fleeing vehicle.

“It was ludicrous,” County Commission Chairman Gene Wolf told The Forum. “Why do we have to pay this?”

Contributed / Mercer County Sheriff's Office

Martin died Dec. 6, 2023, after he laid out tire deflation strips on North Dakota Highway 200 between Hazen and Beulah in an attempt to stop a fleeing Ian Cramer.

Martin, a 15-year veteran with the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department, took cover behind his vehicle. Cramer crashed into the squad vehicle, which then hit Martin and killed him, according to court documents.

The deputy was 53 years old.

Cramer, 44, pleaded guilty to a long list of charges in connection to the crash, including homicide while fleeing a peace officer. He was sentenced on Dec. 30, 2024, to 28 years in prison.

Grand Forks also saw a dramatic increase in the wake of tragedy four years ago. Its annual premium jumped from just under $153,000 in 2020 to more than $288,000 the next year.

Salamah Pendleton, 46, fatally shot his mother and Grand Forks Police Officer Cody Holte, 29, in May 2020 as law enforcement attempted to enforce an eviction on Pendleton at his apartment. Pendleton also shot Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Cpl. Ron Nord in the thigh, and he survived.

Pendleton was sentenced in October 2021 to life in prison for Holte's death.

Grand Forks spokesman John Bernstrom said it is fair to assume Holte’s murder resulted in the city’s insurance going up, but he couldn’t say for sure whether all of the $135,000 jump was due to the shooting. Other city employee injuries could have contributed to the increase, he said.

“Can I say that every single one of those dollars is tied to that event? I can’t say that,” Bernstrom said.

For counties and cities, the dramatic increases can be a burden, Mike Wolf said. Wolf is a county employer group underwriting and loss control manager for the North Dakota Association of Counties.

He said he is sympathetic, but paying the insurance to cover bills associated with government-related injuries and deaths is “part of the cost of doing business."

“I don’t think there’s anyone who likes when those types of things happen,” he said.

North Dakota requires all employers in the state to purchase workers’ compensation coverage through the state’s Workforce Safety and Insurance, also known as WSI. The insurance covers workplace injuries, illnesses and death.

Cities and counties must have the insurance, Mike Wolf told The Forum. The Counties Association formed the County Employer Group in 1996 so all 53 counties in the state could be part of one group, he said.

“We do all the claims management for them,” he said. “We facilitate all the return-to-work and medical management. We do safety training for them.”

Each county has a baseline cost, which goes down based on risk management, he said. That could include discounts for safety training.

The premiums also go up with incidents, he said.

“If you have accidents, you pay more,” he said. “If you don't have accidents, you get a discount.”

WSI spokesperson Valerie Kingsley said her agency doesn’t know how the Association of Counties assesses premium costs.

The association has a reserve for counties to cover 70% of a premium increase attributed to catastrophic injuries and deaths that are not the fault of counties, Mike Wolf said. For Mercer County, that would equal about $33,000 in savings.

Cities work directly with WSI to get their workers’ compensation coverage, said Stephanie Dassinger Engebreston, deputy director and attorney for the North Dakota League of Cities. The League doesn’t have a reserve program like the Association of Counties to help cover premium increases cities may incur, she said.

The increase for Mercer County is expected to last three years, Mike Wolf said in discussing the change with the County Commission on Jan. 15. Commissioners said they understood why the increase happened and that they would pay the extra cost, but they said they shouldn't have to.

“This isn’t right,” Commissioner Mark Pierce said at the Jan. 15 meeting. “The county should not be penalized for this.”

Cramer drove across three counties, but Mercer County has to “foot the bill” because its Sheriff’s Department stopped Cramer, Gene Wolf said.

“We need law enforcement,” he said. “It’s getting to the point where I don’t want my county officer stopping anybody. Let them go to the next county. If they wreck something in that county, then that county’s going to have to pick up the tab.”

In the last two months, another fleeing suspect rammed into a deputy’s squad vehicle head-on, Gene Wolf said. The deputy survived with minor injuries, but the squad vehicle was totaled, he said.

“So, now we’re down two vehicles. … Now we as Mercer County have to come up with two vehicles,” he said, adding the county's vehicle insurance likely will go up.

The North Dakota Insurance Reserve Fund covers property damage costs incurred during government-related incidents, Fund CEO Keith Pic said. That also could result in premium increases for the political subdivisions involved in those incidents, he said.

The county could ask WSI to sue Cramer’s insurance to recoup the costs associated with the workers’ compensation premium increase, Mike Wolf said, but that process could take years. A settlement also may not cover the entire increase, he said.

Mercer County State’s Attorney Todd Schwarz declined to comment when asked if the county planned to go after Cramer’s insurance company.

Ian Cramer is the son of U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.

The increase for Fargo is an "unfortunate ramification of a truly tragic and unprecedented event," Schildberger said, but the city knows WSI is following its process.