Alex S. Vitale is an associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, where he teaches about the sociology of law, criminology, and social movements. He is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics. His research focuses on the politics of community policing and the policing of demonstrations.

Recent publications deal with order-maintenance policing efforts on Los Angeles’s Skid Row, the policing of the G-20 protests in Seoul, South Korea, the challenges that the Occupy Wall Street movement posed for local police, and a history of protest policing in New York City. He consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally and is Senior Policy Advisor to the Police Reform Organizing Project in New York City. He has coauthored two reports on protest policing with the New York Civil Liberties Union: "Arresting Protest" and "Rights and Wrongs at the RNC." Last fall he was appointed to the New York State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Vitale’s research has been published in Policing and Society, Criminology and Public Policy, Contemporary Sociology, Mobilization, Police Practices and Research, and Urban Affair. His current work focuses on developing alternatives to traditional police functions. In addition, he is regularly quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. Vitale earned his PhD from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @avitale.