LAPD's Joint Regional Intelligence Center Begins Using Palantir for Surveillance

In 2009, the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), Southern California’s multiagency, multidisciplinary fusion center, began using Palantir Technologies’ data analysis platform to connect and analyze Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and other intelligence data. This marked Palantir’s first major deployment with local law enforcement, expanding the company’s reach beyond federal intelligence and military agencies to municipal police departments.

JRIC is a post-9/11 fusion center that brings together federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to share intelligence and coordinate surveillance activities. The center serves as a hub for the Los Angeles Police Department, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies operating in Southern California. By 2009, JRIC was using Palantir to integrate data from at least 19 different databases, including:

• LAPD data on arrests, stops, and investigations
• Data collected by other government agencies
• External data from private sources through licensing agreements with data brokers
• Suspicious Activity Reports from across the region

The deployment at JRIC represented a significant expansion of surveillance capabilities against domestic populations. While Palantir’s technology had been developed for tracking terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the same capabilities were now being applied to surveil residents of Los Angeles. Everyone from detectives to transit cops to homeland security officials gained access to Palantir’s integrated analysis platform.

The LAPD’s formal adoption of Palantir came in 2011, building on JRIC’s 2009 deployment. By that time, Palantir had become deeply embedded in Los Angeles law enforcement, with the platform used to parse and connect 160 data sets. The LAPD would later use Palantir for controversial “predictive policing” programs that civil rights advocates argued perpetuated racial bias and discriminatory enforcement patterns.

The JRIC deployment established a business model that Palantir would replicate nationwide: providing fusion centers and major police departments with powerful data integration and analysis capabilities, often with initial funding from federal homeland security grants. This allowed Palantir to expand its domestic surveillance footprint while maintaining the appearance of serving counterterrorism objectives.

Civil liberties advocates raised concerns that fusion centers like JRIC, equipped with tools like Palantir, were effectively creating mass surveillance infrastructure that could be used to monitor political activists, immigrants, and marginalized communities under the guise of preventing terrorism. These concerns would prove well-founded as Palantir later became central to ICE’s immigration enforcement apparatus.