Capitol Failures: The Future Of Policing & Domestic Terror Laws In The US / Alex Vitale
Professor Alex Vitale, sociologist and author of The End of Policing, joins me to discuss the Capitol siege on January 6th, the role the Capitol police played in the event, and the deeply political reasons the police were under-resourced, under-staffed, and completely overwhelmed in the face of the mob.
Prof. Vitale steps outside the narratives that have inevitably emerged in the wake of this event:
That the failure to secure the Capitol is due to a lack of police funding and training (meaning we need to beef up policing in a general sense, leading to more legislation to "combat domestic terror" by expanding the surveillance and police state in the US).
That the police were "letting" the rioters into the Capitol building and actively cooperating with them (which there are isolated examples of, no doubt, but not in a general sense).
These narrow interpretations exclude the true complexities of the event. Prof. Vitale provides deeper context into the ongoing efforts to scale back and defund the police nationwide, and how the narratives around this particular event at the Capitol obscures the deeper questions we should be asking about the role police play in the systemic oppression of communities across the US.
Bio:
Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
Episode Notes:
Learn more about and follow Prof. Vitale’s work and follow him on Twitter @avitale
Purchase The End of Police from Verso Books
Music provided by Eli Stonements.
