Michael Casiano
Assistant professor and author of Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State, specializing in the history of policing, urban governance, and race in Baltimore.
Best podcasts with Michael Casiano
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Feb 1, 2026 • 1h 20min
Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
Michael Casiano, assistant professor and author of Let Us Alone, traces how Baltimore built a modern, racialized system of policing and carceral control. He discusses striking archival images, vagrancy laws, school and social‑work surveillance, courtroom injustices, and how reformers shaped professionalized police power. The conversation maps sites of state control and the city's role in broader national trends.
Feb 1, 2026 • 1h 20min
Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
Michael Casiano, Assistant Professor of American Studies at UMBC and author of Let Us Alone, traces how Baltimore’s police grew into a racialized municipal power. He discusses the book’s organization by policing sites, the chilling cover photo of masked detectives, vagrancy laws and jails, reformers' roles, courtroom cases like Henry Brown’s, and the Black press as a record of policing.
