Scotland Yard is using AI tools provided by US tech company Palantir to monitor staff behavior in an effort to root out failed officers, the Guardian has learned.
The Metropolitan Police has previously refused to confirm or deny the use of technology provided by the company, which also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump’s ICE operation. It has now confirmed it is using Palantir’s AI to analyze internal data about sickness levels, absenteeism and overtime patterns in an attempt to identify potential lapses in professional standards.
The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, criticized the policy as “automated suspicion”. It said: “Officers should not be subject to opaque or untested tools that risk misinterpreting intolerable workload pressures, sickness or overtime as indicators of wrongdoing.”
With 46,000 officers and staff, the Met is the UK’s largest police force and has faced waves of controversy, from failures to properly vet officers – including Wayne Couzens murdering Sarah Everard – to tolerating discriminatory and misogynistic behaviour.
The force said: “There is evidence to suggest a correlation between significant levels of sickness, increased absenteeism or unusually high overtime and failures in standards, culture and behaviour.”
By bringing together data from multiple existing internal databases, the goal of the time-limited pilot of Palantir’s technology is to “help us identify these behavioral patterns among our officers and staff” and is “part of our broader effort to raise standards and improve Met culture”.
It added: “Palantir’s systems can help identify patterns while officials explore further and make any decisions on standards, performance or other issues.”
A Police Federation spokesman said: “Any system of profiling officers using algorithmic models needs to be very careful. Policing already operates under extensive and in-depth scrutiny of any profession … If the force is serious about raising standards and public confidence, the focus must be on proper oversight, fair processes.”
Palantir was embroiled in an ongoing row over Peter Mandelson’s role as Keir Stormer’s ambassador to the US before he was fired over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The lobbying firm Mandelson co-owns, works for global counsel Palantir, which was co-founded by Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
Mandelson and Starmer visited Palantir’s technology showroom in Washington DC last year and met with its chief executive, Alex Karp, after Mandelson was hired. MPs have called for more transparency on Palantir’s public sector contracts in the UK, including a £330m contract signed with the NHS in November 2023 and a £240m contract agreed with the Ministry of Defense in December 2025 to provide a federated data platform.
Responding to the Met’s Palantir pilot, Martin Wrigley MP, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee, said: “I am concerned about the rights of officers as employees. It is controversial for officers to spy on some staff. Some are controversial before they use AI. Palantir is being watched by everyone in government.
Palantir’s AI is already available for use by many other police forces to assist with investigations as part of services provided by the two Regional Investigations Divisions.
Labor said in its policing white paper last month that it was “committed to supporting the police to adopt AI responsibly, at speed and scale”. The party plans to invest more than £115m over the next three years to “support the rapid and responsible development, testing and rollout of AI tools across all 43 forces in England and Wales”.
A Palantir spokesperson said: “We’re proud to use our software to deliver better public services in the UK, including improving police operations, delivering more NHS operations, helping Royal Navy ships stay at sea longer.”
