Last year, Bedfordshire Police were trying to dismantle the “F*** the Police” gang in Luton. They had stolen £700,000 from cash machines across the country — more than 3,000 withdrawals from dozens of locations. The investigation involved data scattered across multiple force systems, phone records from seized devices, ANPR data, financial transactions. Connecting it all, by hand, would have taken months.
Using software made by my company, Palantir, they did it in weeks. The gang is now behind bars.
That is what our software does. We provide tools that allow police forces, hospitals and other government departments to join together the information they already lawfully hold, so they can spot patterns, identify risk and act faster. It is powerful software — but it is just that. Our customers are in full control of how it is used and who has access to their data.
In policing, Palantir is also used to enforce Clare’s Law, which gives women the right to know if their partner has an abusive past. It has cut the average time taken to perform a Clare’s Law check by 85 per cent. And in Bedfordshire alone it has helped identify 1,000 women in a single year whose partners have a history of domestic abuse that they didn’t know about. It is also used for child protection, where the same force says it has resulted in a 59 per cent increase in safeguarding opportunities for at-risk kids.
Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Police asked us to help them do something similar, but within their ranks. After David Carrick, after Wayne Couzens, after the Casey Review, the demand on the Met has been clear: identify and remove the small minority of officers who do not meet the standards the rest of the force upholds. The Mayor of London himself has been among the loudest voices making that demand.
Mayor’s decision will cost jobs
The early results were striking. At least two officers arrested for offences including sexual assault, fraud and misconduct. Two more suspended pending gross misconduct investigations. Forty-two senior leaders, between the ranks of chief inspector and chief superintendent, being assessed for serious breaches of conduct.
The Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, described the work as “using technology, data and stronger legal powers to confront poor behaviour, raise standards and fix our foundations”.
The Met decided to use the software not only to continue to root out misconduct in its ranks, but also to turn the capabilities outward and tackle crime across the capital. They wanted to use it for organised crime investigations and across the breadth of their work.
Until last week, when the Mayor told them to stop.
The Met has been blunt about what this means. The decision, they say, will give “hostile states and organised criminals” an advantage. It will force further cuts to officer numbers in a force already shrinking for the third consecutive year. It will cost 1,150 jobs. They have called the block itself “the opposite of value for money”.
“Tackling crime and making London safer is my number one priority”. The Mayor’s own words. The disconnect is hard to miss. A mayor committed to fighting crime in London, and to rooting out misconduct among police officers, is stopping the Metropolitan Police using the software tools they say they need to do exactly that.
The ICE factor
So there must be a pretty good reason for such a drastic intervention then?
The Mayor’s office cites an alleged procedural error around the way in which the Met liaised with the Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime as they sought to procure our software. But the words of those around the Mayor suggest a different story as to why this decision was taken.
“The Mayor expects that Londoners would only want to see public funding go to companies that share the values of the city,” said a source from the Mayor’s office.
Translation: Palantir is controversial, most commonly because our software is also used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States to implement the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
To deny police officers proven software because of how it is being used in another democratic system is the worst form of virtue signalling
Our work with ICE is not new. It began under President Obama in 2014 and has continued since, including under President Biden. Our view is that it would be wrong for unelected tech bosses to pick and choose which fairly elected governments we provide our software to (though to be clear: we do not and have never worked in any countries adversarial to western values, such as Russia and China).
Many Londoners have strong views about the Trump administration. But to deny police officers proven software that will help them fight crime because they dislike how that software is being used in another democratic system is the worst form of virtue signalling.
Palantir has almost 1,000 people in London, almost 20 per cent of our global workforce. Every one of them would define this city’s values slightly differently. But here is one value I expect would command unanimity among them, and among people across the capital: that the safety of Londoners should not be traded for a political gesture aimed at Washington.
The Mayor’s decision fails that test. It deserves a rethink.
Louis Mosley is CEO of Palantir UK
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