The

The Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood, the non-AI-specified two guests in two

segments today. Alex Vitale will talk about Zoran and the Cops, and Dwayne Monroe will wax skeptical

about AI. These are dark times, but there are flashes of light. One of the brightest is the victory

of Zoron Mamdani in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. He's the favorite to win the

general election in November, but everyone from establishment

liberals to full-blown reactionaries is mobilizing to crush him.

Along those reactionary lines, Fox's Laura Ingram brought on someone she identified as

a survivor of Mao's revolution in China to meditate on Mamdani's mild social democratic agenda.

One of the major points of friction with that establishment is what they see is his desire

to defund the police, something he never campaigned on, and his desire to replace armed

interventions with more humane approaches, which he did campaign on.

Here to talk about cops, cops in New York City, and the Mamdani agenda is Alex Vitale.

Alex is a professor of sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice

Project at Brooklyn College and teaches also at the CUNY Graduate Center.

His book, The End of Policing, was published by Verso in 2017.

Alex Vitale.

If you visit New York Postland, which I do probably too often for my own mental health,

you learn that the NYPD is short-handed, underpaid, and suffering an exodus of cops.

What's the truth here?

Well, head counts have fallen somewhat through attrition primarily.

Most people serve at most, you know, 20 to 25 years on the job and many a bit less than that.

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