Palantir’s expansion from intelligence and military work into U.S. law enforcement included the Los Angeles Police Department’s Operation LASER, which used its software to assemble profiles of people selected for additional police attention. The program combined individual targeting with patrols in designated areas, bringing data analysis into decisions about whom and where to police.
The LAPD began experimenting with Palantir in 2009, initially to visualize incoming police calls. That work developed into an investigative platform connecting information such as crime reports and license-plate records.
From intelligence work to police investigations
Palantir was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale and Nathan Gettings. It received early backing from In-Q-Tel, the CIA-backed investment organization, and developed software for intelligence and military users. The company later went public through a direct listing in 2020.
A leaked 2013 Palantir document described military applications involving roadside-bomb analysis and biometric records. The document credited the software with helping identify garage-door openers used as remote detonators and enabling Marines to check field samples against fingerprint and DNA records more quickly. It also cited a survey of military personnel in Afghanistan. These were accounts presented in the document, including its claims about operational benefits.
How Operation LASER used police data
Operation LASER began in the LAPD’s Newton Area in 2011. It directed patrols toward areas identified through historical crime data and used Chronic Offender Bulletins to identify people deemed potential repeat offenders. Consultant Craig Uchida, who helped develop the program, described Palantir’s role in combining information from sources including field interviews, crime incidents and license plates to accelerate preparation of those bulletins.
A 2019 review by the Los Angeles Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General described LASER’s person-based component as the Chronic Offender Program and its geographic targets as LASER Zones. Analysts used Palantir and other department systems to review individuals’ histories. A points system based on police criteria ranked people for inclusion on Chronic Offender lists.
The review said analysts could use Palantir to generate bulletins containing photographs, arrest histories, vehicle information and recent police contacts. The bulletin template warned that its contents alone did not establish reasonable suspicion to detain someone or probable cause for an arrest.
The LAPD also used PredPol, a separate system designed to forecast crime locations. The inspector general’s review described its inputs as historical crime types, locations, dates and times, without information about specific individuals. Geographic forecasts and individual targeting therefore involved different processes, although LASER itself addressed both people and places.
Feedback risks and concerns about policing methods
A 2017 study by Danielle Ensign and colleagues examined how predictive policing could produce feedback loops. Their mathematical analysis and simulations showed how incidents discovered by deployed officers could influence subsequent deployment decisions, repeatedly directing police toward the same neighborhoods without accurately reflecting underlying crime rates.
The researchers found that incorporating incidents reported by residents could reduce the feedback effect but did not eliminate it under the conditions modeled without further changes to the system’s inputs. The study examined predictive-policing models, rather than evaluating Palantir’s LAPD deployment.
Ana Muniz, identified in a February 2014 account as an activist and researcher with the Inglewood-based Youth Justice Coalition, warned against blurring military and domestic policing roles. She argued that police should not treat the population they serve as an external enemy.
Privacy claims and a confidentiality complaint
Palantir advertised privacy and civil-liberties protections in its law-enforcement software, including detailed access controls and data-retention capabilities. A historical complaint from Long Beach police raised questions about how confidentiality controls worked in practice.
In emails beginning in November 2014, Long Beach police Sergeant Lee DeBrabander complained that officers outside his confidentiality group could retrieve a case he had marked confidential by searching a license plate mentioned in its narrative. His correspondence described the case as still accessible four months later, when he was continuing to seek a fix from Palantir.
