Something dangerous is happening in New York City. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has picked a man named Alex Vitale to help shape the future of public safety in the city. Vitale is not a former police officer. He is not a community leader who works with law enforcement. He is a professor at Brooklyn College. And he has spent much of his life arguing that we should get rid of the police altogether.
Vitale wrote a book called “The End of Policing.” The very title tells you what he believes. He does not want to reform the police. He does not want to make them better. He wants to get rid of them. In his book, he says the police do not exist to help people. He also says that we should not send police to deal with drug crimes. He wants to stop police from patrolling our borders. He even thinks police should not work to stop street gangs. According to him, these efforts are all rooted in racism.
This is the man Mamdani wants helping to lead his transition team. This is the man who will help decide what “community safety” looks like in the city that once gave us heroes like the NYPD officers who ran into the World Trade Center on 9/11. It’s not just an insult to police officers. It’s a threat to the safety and order of the city itself.
Vitale’s ideas are not just extreme. They are dangerous. He says that gang units are racist. He claims that young Black and Latino men are unfairly targeted just for hanging out together. But he ignores the fact that many of these young men are trapped in communities where real gang violence ruins lives. Taking the police away does not make those communities safer. It leaves them to suffer without protection.
Vitale also says that policing our borders is racist and “inhumane.” He wants to paint our Border Patrol agents as villains. But those brave men and women are defending our nation’s borders. They are protecting American families from drug traffickers, human smugglers, and foreign criminals. Without them, our country would be wide open to danger.
Even more troubling is what Vitale says about police training. He mocks the idea of teaching officers about bias. He says it doesn’t matter how they feel, because the whole system is racist. In other words, no matter how hard a police officer works to do the right thing, people like Vitale will still call him a racist. That’s not reform. That’s slander.
Vitale has gone even further on social media. He has called for the end of police helicopters, bicycle police, school police, and even the Drug Enforcement Administration. He wants to abolish joint terrorism task forces. He has even said the presidency of the United States should be abolished. This is not someone with a balanced view. This is someone who wants to tear down the very institutions that keep us safe.
And Mamdani is not stopping with Vitale. He has also hired Elle Bisgaard-Church, a known member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She helped create his plan to send social workers instead of police to respond to some 911 calls. That may sound nice in theory, but when a call turns violent, who will protect the social worker? Who will protect the public?
This is what happens when radical ideas are allowed to take root in city government. Instead of protecting families, Mamdani is surrounding himself with people who want to dismantle the systems that keep families safe. Instead of backing the blue, he is backing those who want to defund and delete the police.
New York City is at a crossroads. It can choose safety, order, and tradition. Or it can choose chaos, lawlessness, and the failed dreams of socialist academics. For the sake of every working family, every child, and every law-abiding citizen, let us pray it chooses wisely.
