May 2025 Newsletter
Policing and Social Justice Project
Colombia
We co-hosted a Discussion Session with our partners Juan Fernandez Ochoa of RATS, Alí Bantú Ashanti of the Colectivo Justicia Racial and Alex Sierra of CESJUL at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Bogota. We were joined by a couple of dozen folks from several countries to discuss how to move forward on our efforts to rethink international drug policy from an abolitionist perspective. One of the key points made by our partners in Colombia is the need to decenter and delegitimate the use of police and military. More broadly, we discussed how abolitionism is consistent with an analysis of the drug war as a colonial project that cannot be reformed.
Prof. Vitale also spent a day at the Colectivo meeting with lawyers and advocates there and reviewing a documentary in progress about the criminalization of extremely poor, mostly Black campesinos on the Pacific coast of Colombia for involvement in transporting drugs. It is important when we talk about international drug trade that we remember that almost everyone involved are extremely poor people drawn into an illicit market often as an economic choice of last result.
Copaganda
One of the outgrowths of the movement of 2020 has been an increased awareness of how the police, news media, and entertainment companies relentlessly attempt to shape pro-police public opinion. Alec Karakatsanis’s new book “Copaganda” looks at the role of mainstream journalism in constantly reproducing false and misleading narratives about the seriousness of crime and the need for police to deal with it.
Interrupting Criminalization has also prepared an excellent toolkit on copaganda related to migration.
https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com/resources-all/dont-be-a-copagandist-migration-edition
In May 2024, Prof. Vitale was quoted in Mother Jones about the NYPD’s use of “sizzle reals” to promote themselves at a time when the mayor and the department were facing numerous corruption scandals.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/nypd-sizzle-reel-student-protests/
“‘This is copaganda, designed primarily to provide the mayor with political cover, but then also to show off the military might and alleged professionalism of the NYPD,’ Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project, told Mother Jones.”
In 2021 Porf. Vitale appeared on the podcast Pure Non Fiction to discuss the harms of true crime podcasts.
https://www.purenonfiction.net/episodes/131-alex-vitale-on-rethinking-true-crime
He also appears on the podcast series “Running from Cops” about the hugely problematic copaganda shows COPS and Live PD.
Sex Work
Our film Sex Work: It’s Just a Job, has been accepted into Sex Worker Fest - The San Francisco Bay Area Sex Worker Film & Arts Festival.
Decrim NY is holding a virtual Lobby Day on May 7th to push for full decriminalization of sex work in New York State.
Sweden wants to introduce yet another anti-sex work law, this time focused on online workers. Join with the European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance in signing their petition.
Read and sign onto the full statement here or download their statement in English or Swedish.
GANGS Coalition
Last week, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), The Legal Aid Society, The Bronx Defenders, Latino Justice PRLDEF, and the law firm Ballard Spahr filed a putative class-action complaint against the City of New York, challenging the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) racially disparate targeting, surveillance, and criminalization of tens of thousands of Black and Latino New Yorkers through the use of the Criminal Group Database, widely known as the Gang Database. The complaint asserts that the NYPD’s practices and policies related to the Database are in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as state and local laws. You can read the full Press release here.
The GANGS Coalition is organizing a Mayoral Forum in NYC to be hosted by Bright Light Baptist Church in Brooklyn. Details to be released shortly.
Film Corner
Prof. Vitale was invited to discuss the 1971 film “Punishment Park” at the Feirstein Film School. This chilling fictional documentary about the repression of social movements at the height of the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights eras is shockingly relevant today.
Upcoming Events
May 5th Police Writers Group
May 14th, Faculty Day, Brooklyn College
May 15th Peace Justice 6 pm
May 16th, Class visit, UCSD
Book Corner
Mukerjee, Ronica and Carlos Martinez eds. 2025. All This Safety is Killing Us: Health Justice Beyond Prisons, Police, And Borders. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
“A stark first-hand look at the ways policing and carcerality negatively impact health care delivery and patient well-being, and evidence-based steps we can take to create safer and healthier medical settings. This book should be required reading for everyone working in health-care settings.”
—ALEX S. VITALE, author of The End of Policing
Tylek, Bianca and Worth Rises. 2025. The Prison Industry: How it Works and Who Profits. New York: The New Press.
"This is an essential resource for those working to dismantle the prison industrial complex and anyone who wants to understand the profiteering at the heart of mass incarceration."
—Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing
Staff Notes
Our Technology Fellow, Anna Sipek, has been admitted to the Liberal Studies program at CUNY. Congratulations Anna!
Support
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