LAPD Launches Operation LASER Predictive Policing Program with Palantir

The Los Angeles Police Department launches Operation LASER (Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration), a controversial predictive policing program that runs from 2011 to 2019. The program is designed to identify and target individuals deemed at high risk of committing violent crimes using a points-based scoring system called the LASER score.

Central to Operation LASER’s implementation is Palantir Technologies’ Gotham data-mining platform, which the LAPD began using in September 2011. As program architect Craig Uchida notes in a 2012 research paper, Palantir is central to the program’s operation. The software merges data from multiple sources including crime reports, arrest records, automated license plate readers, rap sheets, field interview cards, and other databases to create comprehensive profiles of individuals.

According to Palantir, tasks that previously took LAPD officers an hour to compile now take “about five minutes” using the Gotham platform. The program receives nearly $1 million in federal funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance as part of the Obama administration’s Smart Policing Initiative, launched in 2009.

Initial results appear promising: Newton Division ends 2012 with an all-time low of 16 homicides—a 56% decrease from 2011 and 59% decrease from 2010. However, the program’s targeting methodology raises serious civil rights concerns.

The LAPD’s Chronic Offender Program, part of Operation LASER, creates a database of so-called “chronic offenders,” almost 80% of whom are Black and Latino men. In a city where Black people comprise less than 10% of the population, nearly half of those targeted by Operation LASER are Black. Many individuals in the database have minimal or no actual contact with officers, raising questions about the criteria used for inclusion.

The program’s use of predictive algorithms trained on historically biased policing data creates a self-reinforcing cycle: areas with higher historical arrest rates receive more intensive policing, leading to more arrests, which the algorithm interprets as validation of its predictions. This dynamic disproportionately impacts communities of color and contributes to over-policing in already marginalized neighborhoods.

Operation LASER will be discontinued in 2019 following sustained community activism and criticism of its discriminatory targeting practices.