Abdul Nasser Rad is the chief policy officer at Vital City and an applied public safety researcher. He leads efforts to synthesize and disseminate practical ideas to make New York and other cities safer and better. He has extensive previous experience in both New York City government and in non-profits working on public safety and criminal justice issues.
Most recently, Rad led research and data for Campaign Zero. Previously, he was at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) where he led research and data efforts for the NYC Police Reform and Reinvention Implementation Taskforce and the NYC Office of Neighborhood Safety. Prior to MOCJ, he worked as an applied researcher at the Vera Institute of Justice where he examined enforcement trends, 911/emergency response, conducted law enforcement agency evaluations, and provided technical assistance to law enforcement agencies/local municipalities on developing more comprehensive performance metrics around public safety.
Rad is completing his doctoral studies in sociology at the University of Oxford, where he is a Clarendon scholar. His research is situated on the intersection of sociology, comparative politics, and criminology where he explores the political sociology of developing equitable justice systems. Specifically, it explores how police union mechanisms reinforce racial orders by combating accountability and sustaining cultures which insulate both police forces and their practices from the broader dynamics of equity.
He holds an MPhil from the University of Oxford and a B.A. from Hunter College (City University of New York).
