Alex Vitale, the author of a book titled The End of Policing, has called the police “violence workers.” He has said, “The institution of policing exists to facilitate racial inequality.” And he has even said, “We need to kill the cop in our head.”
This outspoken police abolitionist is the kind of professor whose ideas usually don’t travel far beyond the lecture hall. Not anymore.
Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College, is now advising New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on one of his newly created 17 transition committees, which includes groups dedicated to policing “immigrant justice” and “worker justice.”
The anti-cop professor is just the tip of the iceberg. In the past four weeks, Mamdani made hundreds of appointments as he fills out his administration and transition team ahead of his inauguration on New Year’s Day. A look into the activist backgrounds of many of these appointees will disappoint anyone who was hoping that the 34-year-old socialist—who previously declared that “capitalism is theft” and called the New York Police Department “racist”—might moderate his approach between winning the election and governing.
