Sadiq Khan has blocked a deal worth £50m between the Metropolitan Police and US company Palantir.
The Met had agreed a deal to use the the controversial US firm’s artificial intelligence tech to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations.
However, the Mayor of London intervened in the deal due to “serious concerns” over how the deal had been struck, the Guardian reports.
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The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) said there had been a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules and that the Met had only seriously considered Palantir as the supplier.
They also cited concerns with Palantir’s values and ethics, with Khan having previously said Londoners only wanted to see public money being paid to companies that “share the values of our city”.
City Hall also said that the proposal had not “ensured or demonstrated value for money.”
Khan’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, said in a letter to Met commissioner Mark Rowley: “I have not been provided with any acceptable explanation for this failure, which I regard as a clear and serious breach of the applicable procedural requirements.”
The mayor’s intervention has sparked anger from Scotland Yard though, who have said his decision to block the deal is “disappointing.”
The force has argued that without Palantir’s tech it would have to cut officer numbers.
“The decision by Mopac is disappointing,” said a Met spokesperson. “We need to modernise and use the very best technology available. We must be able to innovate at a faster rate than hostile states and organised criminals. For now, this decision prevents us using technology already available to the MoD, the NHS and other police forces.”
Palantir, founded by tech mogul and Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel, already has controversial contracts with the NHS and the Ministry of Defence.
The Met had trialled Palantir’s AI to monitor staff behaviour to try and root out corrupt and failing officers, a trial Scotland Yard said had been successful.
Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes said the tech had identified “unacceptable, dishonest, corrosive behaviours” from Metropolitan Police officers, LBC reports.
The Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents more than 30,000 officers in London, had previously warned against the use of AI in policing.
General secretary Matt Cane said: “This use of AI will seriously damage the trust Metropolitan Police officers have in the force and ride a coach and horses through already plummeting morale.
“No-one wants bad police officers in policing.
“The good, brave and hard-working officers we represent are the first to say that the small minority of officers who are not fit to serve should not be in the police service.
“But this use of AI to spy on our officers is not proportionate, just or proper.
“It’s an outrageous and unforgivable invasion of privacy.”