PredPol, a predictive policing corporation that grew out of a research project between the Los Angeles Police Department and University of California, Los Angeles, works with mathematicians, data scientists, police officers, and crime analysts to identify crime "before it happens." During the COVID-19 pandemic, they propose that police become the de facto public health officials to track COVID-19 in Communities of Color in Los Angeles, employing PredPol tactics for contact tracing.

The Stop Los Angeles Police Department Spying Coalition and Free Radicals publish an article denouncing this proposal as a means of exploiting COVID-19 as an opportunity for profit that would result in the targeting and policing of the poorest, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color neighborhoods in LA under the false guise of "national security." This harkens back to methods of surveillance rooted in white supremacy and colonization in the mid-18th century, such as the "Lantern Laws," which tracked Black, Indigenous, and people of mixed ancestry.