Met sacks head of its volunteer officers after Palantir AI flagged work phone misuse

James Deller, the special chief officer in charge of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Constabulary, has been dismissed from the force. A misconduct hearing on Friday ended his career after he used a force-issued phone to copy intimate pictures of a woman, the Met said.

Investigators uncovered the misconduct with lawful business monitoring and Foundry, a Palantir system that uses artificial intelligence, according to the force.

What the Met Special Constabulary chief did

The two intimate pictures had been sent to Deller’s personal phone in July and August 2025. Investigators established that he photographed them with his work handset. They had been sent with WhatsApp’s “view once” setting, which makes a picture vanish after it is opened. He forwarded the copies to his own device and then deleted them from the work phone.

It was picked up during Project Galatasaray, a week-long operation that used the AI tools to look for corruption and professional misconduct inside the force. Deller will go on the College of Policing’s barred list and cannot work in policing again.

Cdr Pete Stevens said: “His actions were an abuse of the trust put in him.” He added that special constables are volunteers who give up their time and deserve leaders with the highest standards.

Row over Palantir AI at the Met

In April the Metropolitan Police Federation told officers to be “extremely cautious” about carrying Met devices off duty after the monitoring software was upgraded. Its general secretary, Matt Cane, said staff had not been told the upgrade brought in Palantir’s technology.

In May, Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes told the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee that officers faced no extra workplace surveillance, and said the tools helped find “unacceptable, dishonest, corrosive behaviours”.

Separately, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime stopped the Met signing a two-year Palantir contract for AI in criminal investigations, saying the force had not set out its procurement strategy. Palantir is suing the office over that decision.