Alex S. Vitale spoke on November 15, 2020 about “Understanding ‘Defund the Police’.” The Zoom platform was sponsored by American Ethical Union’s Ethical Action Committee and hosted by Riverdale Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture. (Click on video icon in upper right corner to watch. Watch the Q&A portion of platform here.)

You’ve likely heard the calls for defunding the police, during this summer’s demonstrations against police killings. You may agree and wonder how we could get there, or you may think that defunding goes too far, or you may just wonder what it means. Whatever your reaction, here’s a chance to find out more. Professor Alex S. Vitale, who teaches in the Department of Sociology at Brooklyn College and has researched and written about the future of policing for 30 years, will explain the “defund the police” movement and its relationship to the long struggle for racial and economic justice.

Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing.

His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.