AI bots snitching on police to root out ‘bent coppers’ like in Line of Duty
Police union chiefs moan the move puts officers under ‘automated suspicion’ as US tech giant monitoring staff behaviour to catch them out
(Image: VCG via Getty Images)
Bots are policing cops to keep them on the straight and narrow. Scotland Yard is using AI tools supplied by a US tech giant to monitor staff behaviour in a bid to root out bad boy bobbies.
AI firm Palantir also works for the Israeli military and US President Donald Trump’s ICE operation. The Met has admitted it is using artificial intelligence to analyse data on sickness levels, absences and overtime patterns to identify shortcomings in professional standards.
The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said the move amounted to ‘automated suspicion’. A spokesman said: “Officers must not be subjected to opaque or untested tools that risk misinterpreting unsustainable workload pressures, sickness or overtime as indicators of wrongdoing. Any system that profiles officers using algorithmic patterns must be treated with extreme caution.
“Policing already operates under some of the broadest and deepest scrutiny of any profession.”
A Met spokesman said: “There is evidence to suggest a correlation between significant levels of sickness, increased absences or unusually high overtime, and failings in standards, culture and behaviour.”
By bringing together data from multiple internal databases Palantir’s tech forms ‘part of our wider effort to drive up standards and improve the Met’s culture’.
The force added: “Palantir’s systems help to identify the patterns but it is officers who then explore further and make any determinations on standards, performance or other issues.”
Palantir has been caught up in the row concerning Peter Mandelson’s role as Britain’s ambassador to the US before he was sacked over his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
A lobbying business Lord Mandelson co-owned – Global Counsel – works for Palantir which was co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel.
Shortly after Mandelson’s appointment last year he and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer visited Palantir’s technology showroom in Washington DC and met its chief executive Alex Karp.
MPs have called for greater transparency over Palantir’s public sector contracts in the UK.
They include a £330m deal signed with the NHS in 2023 to provide a data platform and £240m contract agreed with the Ministry of Defence in December 2025.
Martin Wrigley MP, a Lib Dem member of the Commons science, innovation and technology select committee, said: “I am concerned about the rights of officers as employees.
“Bosses spying on staff has been controversial even before some used AI to do so. Palantir seems to be watching over every aspect of government. Who is watching Palantir?”
Palantir’s AI is already available for use by several other police forces to assist investigations.
Labour said last month it was ‘committed to supporting the police to adopt AI responsibly, at pace 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 spokesman said: “We are proud that our software is being used to deliver better public services in the UK.”
