Mamdani hires Brooklyn College sociology professor who called police ‘natural enemy’ of working class
NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani tapped a Brooklyn College professor known for advocating police abolition to help shape public-safety policy.
'Police are violence workers,' the professor has said. '[I]f you don’t want racism and violence, don’t get the police involved.'
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will appoint a Brooklyn College professor who advocates for police abolition to a transition committee on public safety.
The mayor’s team announced his committee appointments in a Nov. 24 press release. His appointments to the Committee on Community Safety include Alex Vitale, a sociology professor and the author of “The End of Policing” in 2017.
The Committee on Community Safety oversees the city’s police department and other public-safety functions.
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Vitale’s work, The End of Policing, proposes police elimination as a solution to police abuses.
According to a description, the book “shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety.”
It also “demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.”
“In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation of policing alternatives—such as legalization, restorative justice, and harm reduction—has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice,” the description continues. “The best solution to bad policing may be an end to policing.”
Vitale previously said in 2020 that the “institution of policing exists historically to facilitate racial inequality” and that it came “out of colonialism, slavery, and industrial capitalism.”
“Police are violence workers,” he added. “[I]f you don’t want racism and violence, don’t get the police involved.”
The professor has also labeled police officers the “natural enemies of the working class.”
Vitale celebrated his appointment to the Committee on Community Safety X on Nov. 24, writing “A New Era for NYC” on X.
I’m excited to announce that I have been asked to join the Mamdani Transition Team to work on community safety issues. A New Era for NYC. pic.twitter.com/JJBgJsvSpy
— Alex Vitale (@avitale) November 24, 2025
Vitale teaches courses on criminology, sociology of law, social movements, and political sociology, and researches “community policing, the policing of demonstrations and civil disorder, urban politics and economics, and social movements.”
Mamdani identifies as a socialist and advocates rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, and increased taxes on corporations and the top 1 percent of earners.
Calls for police abolition remain common on college and university campuses.
“We have got to abolish the police,” a Texas Christian University professor wrote in August 2024.
The professor continued to say that she “simply cannot think of anything more pressing in our lifetimes. If we don’t get free of policing we might as well be dead.”
As Campus Reform reported in September 2023, a Harvard University professor called for the abolition of the police, blaming officers for the “devaluation of Black life.”
Student organizations at the University of Chicago in Illinois, the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and the University of Texas at Austin have all called for police abolition.
Campus Reform contacted Mayor-elect Mamdani’s press team, Brooklyn College, and Alex Vitale for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
