THE SHADOW COMMISSIONER: How a Brooklyn Professor is Using Goldman Sachs Money to Privatize the Police

NEW YORK — If you want to understand who is actually running New York City come January, don’t look at Zohran Mamdani. He’s just the front man, the charismatic avatar programmed to say "equity" while the city burns. If you want to see the source code, you have to look at the man standing quietly in the shadows of the transition team, the one whose books are currently serving as coasters in every brownstone in Park Slope.

Meet Alex Vitale.

To the untrained eye, Vitale is just another CUNY sociology professor with a beard and a penchant for tweed. But in the ecosystem of the New York power grab, he is something far more dangerous: he is the Architect. He is the man who wrote the manual on how to dismantle the NYPD, not with a bang, but with a thousand grant applications.

And the best part? The "socialist" revolution he’s selling is being paid for by the very Wall Street billionaires he claims to despise.

The Academic Celebrity of the Apocalypse

Vitale is the author of The End of Policing, a book that became the bible of the 2020 riots. Before the tear gas had even cleared from the Barclays Center, Vitale was already on the circuit—flying (pre-COVID) from London to Seoul, lecturing governments on why police are obsolete. He isn't a grime-covered activist; he’s the "Defund" movement’s intellectual sommelier, serving up abolition theory palatable enough for the New York Times editorial board and the Hamptons dinner party set.

His thesis is seductive in its simplicity: The police are doing too much. They shouldn't be handling mental health, or homelessness, or schools. So, we should fire them and replace them with… well, that’s where the grift begins.

Under Mamdani, Vitale is the de facto architect of the "Department of Community Safety." This isn't just a new agency; it is a $1.1 billion trojan horse designed to break the NYPD’s union monopoly and transfer that power—and that money—to a sprawling, unaccountable network of NGOs.

Follow the Money (It Leads to Goldman Sachs)

Here is the dirty little secret the DSA won’t tell you at their karaoke nights: Alex Vitale is funded by the 1%.

Vitale’s "Policing and Social Justice Project" at Brooklyn College isn't running on bake sales. It is allegedly powered by the

Who runs the Vital Projects Fund? David Menschel.

Who is David Menschel? He is the scion of a Goldman Sachs dynasty. His father, Robert Menschel, was a legendary partner at the bank. The money paying for Vitale’s "abolitionist" research—the money paying to strip working-class cops of their pensions—is literally the capital gains of the global banking elite.

Why would a Goldman heir want to defund the police? Because the elite don't need the NYPD. They have private security. They have doormen. They have drivers. The NYPD is a public service for the rest of us. By dismantling it, Menschel and Vitale aren't liberating the poor; they are gentrifying public safety.

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The "Cure Violence" Panopticon

This is where the rabbit hole gets dark.

Vitale’s proposed replacement for the police isn't "community." It’s surveillance capitalism dressed up as social work.

He pushes models like "Cure Violence"—programs that treat crime like a virus. It sounds noble until you look at the implementation. These programs rely on "violence interrupters" who enter neighborhoods to "track" high-risk individuals.

But how do they track them? They use data. They use apps. They use systems like CommCare.

When you replace a cop with a "violence interrupter," you are replacing a public servant bound by the Fourth Amendment with a non-profit contractor bound by a grant agreement. There is no body cam footage for a "community check-in." There is no Civilian Complaint Review Board for a "Cure Violence" NGO.

And who loves this data? The corporate donors of the NGOs we identified earlier: Google, Amazon, Uber.

Think about it. The same people funding Transportation Alternatives (Ben Furnas) and Open Plans (Mark Gorton/Sara Lind) to ban your car are also funding the "alternatives" to the police who would enforce those bans, and are the people on the Mamdani team.

If you drive into a "15-minute zone" in Mamdani’s New York, you won’t get pulled over by a cop. You’ll get flagged by a camera (Amazon), fined by an algorithm (Google), and "interrupted" by an NGO worker (Vitale) who logs your non-compliance into a database owned by a tech billionaire.

It is the privatization of social control.

The "Revolving Door" of Radicalism

Vitale sits at the center of a perfect circle of influence:

1. The Theorist: Vitale writes the academic papers saying police are racist and ineffective.
2. The Financier: David Menschel and the Ford Foundation pour millions into "researching" these claims.
3. The Activist: The DSA and groups like Riders Alliance scream in the streets, citing Vitale’s "studies."
4. The Politician: Zohran Mamdani gets elected promising to "follow the science" (which Vitale wrote).
5. The Contract: The NYPD budget is cut, and the money is transferred to the very NGOs employing the activists.

It is a money laundering operation for political power.

The End Game

Alex Vitale isn't trying to save you. He is building a post-police world where "safety" is a subscription service.

In his vision, the chaotic, human element of the beat cop is replaced by the clean, sterile efficiency of the "Interrupter" and the "Navigator." It appeals to the technocrat’s desire for order. It appeals to the billionaire’s desire for data. And it appeals to the socialists’ desire for revolution.

But for the guy running a bodega in the Bronx? It just means that when he calls 911 because someone is stealing his inventory, he won’t get a squad car. He’ll get a 22-year-old with a clipboard asking him if he’s considered the root causes of the thief’s trauma.

Welcome to the new New York. Alex Vitale built it. Goldman Sachs paid for it. And you’re just living in their laboratory.

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