Forefront Conversations with Alex Vitale

Since the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, there's been a lot of talk around the phrase "Defund the Police" and all that it entails. Shedding light on the conversation is Alex Vitale's book "The End of Policing," an in-depth look at the history of policing, its shortcomings in crime prevention, and an honest evaluation of how any and all contemporary attempts at "reform" will always fall short if police are continuously looked to as the first, last, and best method of dealing with homelessness, drug treatment, and at risk youth. Instead, Vitale, citing his own international experiences and studies of various foreign and local approaches to policing, proposes shifting government funding to build up local communities, housing for the homeless, and mental health services to actually treat systemic biases that find themselves repeatedly played out in law enforcement. "The End of Policing" is not a call for the abolition of police, but for the abolition of a symptom of much larger systemic ills. ABOUT ALEX Alex S. Vitale is professor of sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. He is the author of "City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics" and is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, NY Daily News, and USA Today. To purchase a copy of "The End of Policing," you can do so here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3906-the-end-of-policing