Alex S. Vitale

Alex S. Vitale is an American author and professor of sociology at Brooklyn College. He is also the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, The Appeal, USA Today, Vice News, and other media outlets. Vitale is the author of The End of Policing, which argues for the abolition of police.

Biography Alex S. Vitale is originally from Houston, Texas. In 1989, he received his Bachelor's in Urban anthropology from Hampshire College.

In 1993, Vitale moved to New York City to attend CUNY Graduate Center. During this era, he was able to observe the transition from the administration of Mayor David Dinkins, which Vitale viewed as politically liberal, to the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, which Vitale viewed as neoliberal. He observed aggressive policing and scapegoating of the homeless population under the Giuliani administration.

In 2017, The End of Policing was published. In the book, Vitale argues that the United States should radically reconsider policing, rather than simply reforming it. He argues that the rise of policing in the world was rooted in three primary forms of economic exploitation: colonialism, slavery, and the rise of industrialization in the 19th century. He wrote, "The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last 40 years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself." The End of Policing was met with mixed reception, with positive reviews praising his writing style and detail in research, and negative reviews arguing that Vitale's proposed solution is too extreme or not extreme enough.

Following the George Floyd protests, Vitale's work received wider public interest. He has been interviewed on alternatives to policing, as well as the movements to defund or abolish the police, by media outlets such as NPR, the Intercept, Jacobin, the Nation, The Indypendent, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show. In one interview, he explained, "Part of the problem is that for decades now, communities have been told that the only resource they can have to address their community problems is more policing and more incarceration... Our job is to lay out what the alternatives would look like and give people a sense that they have the power to ask for what they really want." The film covers defunding the police and the George Floyd protests.