New Books Network – Michael Casiano on Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State (U Illinois Press, 2025)

Date: February 1, 2026
Host: Michael Stout
Guest: Michael Casiano

Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network features an in-depth interview with historian Michael Casiano about his new book, Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore’s Police State. Casiano and host Michael Stout explore how policing, municipal governance, and race interwove in Baltimore during the post-Civil War era through the early 20th century. They discuss the chilling symbolism of the book’s cover photo, Casiano’s theoretical approach, the socio-political context of Baltimore, and several case studies illustrating the emergence and consequences of what he terms a "police state."

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Cover Image: Symbolism & Historical Context

[02:16 – 08:13]

• The book's cover features an archival image from the Baltimore Detective Bureau, c. 1908–1910.
• The photo shows about 30 detectives wearing white muslin masks that anonymize their faces, with an unidentified Black man facing away in the foreground.
• The image symbolizes the ritual of "Facing the Masks," a daily practice designed to conceal officers' identities during plainclothes work and to intimidate suspects, particularly African Americans.
• Casiano explains the image reflects “the increasing racialization of policing in Baltimore…as policing becomes like almost singularly or towards…shoring up the color line by the 1920s.” [06:47, Casiano]
• He admits initial reservations about sensationalizing this image but affirms it encapsulates the book’s central arguments.

Notable Quote:

“It is haunting in its sort of like heavily racialized connotations...this was a sort of like ritualistic, kind of humiliation ritual coupled with this sort of like intensive and sort of show of force, power dynamic.”
—Michael Casiano [05:54]

Defining "Police State" and "Police Power"

[08:13 – 13:27]

• Casiano distinguishes between "police" and "the police power,” a term with legal and historical meaning referring to the broad discretion granted to city governments to pursue a vaguely defined "general welfare."
• He situates his work among recent "New Police History" scholarship, noting the influence of books like Khalil Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness.
• He argues that police power involves “not necessarily…the police as being localized within station houses, but thinking about, like, how are other administrations of a deprivation…falling under this banner…?” [10:59, Casiano]
• The police power, he states, enabled practices like racial segregation in real estate and underpinned various forms of state intervention, from asylums to public schools, beyond mere patrol and arrest.

Notable Quote:

“It does seem like any and every conflict is mediated by dialing 911. And I don’t think that’s an accident. I think that’s rooted in the sort of…historical legacies of policing structuring the way that cities are organized.”
—Michael Casiano [12:51]

Organizing the Book: Chronology, Sites, and Teaching

[13:27 – 17:31]

• Casiano structured the book thematically around “sites” (jails, asylums, schools, courts) while maintaining chronological progression.
• His experience teaching informed a pedagogical, more engaging approach, inspired by works like Kelly Lytle Hernández’s City of Inmates.
• He sought to avoid academic repetitiveness and instead allow “shift in perspective, shift of focus, change over time” [15:22, Casiano], making the book more accessible especially for students.

Why Baltimore? Urban Context & Broader Relevance

[17:31 – 22:58]

• Casiano resists framing Baltimore as “exceptional.” Instead, he sees its history as illustrative of broader, systemic trends.
• Baltimore’s unique borderland status after the Civil War—Union-aligned but with deep Confederate ties—influenced its political and social path.
• The city saw “pioneering legislation” and urban growth intersecting with evolving forms of policing and carceral expansion.

Notable Quote:

“If we are to believe that policing is systemic, then there’s not one city that can be the carceral city. All cities are the carceral city.”
—Michael Casiano [18:31]

Case Studies and Historical Actors

The "Bummers": Vagrancy and the Carceral City

[22:58 – 29:48, Chapter 1]

• “Bummers,” or tramps/transient men, became a presumed public problem—used as justification for expanding jails, asylums, and mechanisms of municipal control.
• Their mere existence, not criminal activity, fueled moral panics and legal reform, expanding carceral infrastructure.
• Bummers’ resistance to forced labor, and the city’s lack of carceral capacity, led to bureaucratic growth (e.g., new asylums like Bayview under Johns Hopkins).

Notable Quote:

“What was interesting to me about bummers is how…their mere existence…is the use case for articulating what the post Civil War carceral landscape is going to look like.”
—Michael Casiano [24:12]

Progressive Reformers and Police Reform

[29:48 – 38:33, Chapter 2]

• Casiano profiles Charles Bonaparte (grand-nephew of Napoleon), a key figure in local and national reform, tying Baltimore reform networks to the origins of the FBI with Teddy Roosevelt.
• Progressive reformers weren’t a homogenous bloc but coalesced around the idea of moral “uplift” through police reforms and charity organizations like the Charity Organization Society.
• Bonaparte and allies worked to harness police as an “army against morals violations,” reflecting class and ethnic prejudices.

Notable Quote:

“What Bonaparte and the reformers note is that the police is the agency…ripest for eradicating all the social evils that are the civilizational threat posed by drink and prostitution and gambling and all this stuff.”
—Michael Casiano [34:55]

Soft Policing: Social Workers and Compulsory Schooling

[38:33 – 47:50, Chapter 3]

• Describes the rise of “soft policing” via social workers and attendance officers, especially targeting Black and immigrant families.
• “Friendly visit” programs, rooted in eugenics-influenced social work, led to surveillance and institutionalization through charity referrals and public schools’ truancy enforcement.
• The creation of attendance officers—state agents with police-like powers—transformed minor school absences into criminal matters, disproportionately harming poor children.
• Instead of addressing poverty’s root causes, reformers criminalized truancy, enforcing attendance via threat of reformatories.

Notable Quote:

“There’s this concept called, like, soft policing, which…functions along similar axes…the ability to institutionalize, to detain…and it is embodied in the idea of the social worker.”
—Michael Casiano [39:13]

The Courts and the Story of Henry Albert Brown

[47:50 – 62:27, Chapter 5]

• A microhistory of Henry Albert Brown, a young Black man wrongfully executed for murder in 1921 after a coerced confession and a deeply flawed federal trial.
• Casiano painstakingly traces Brown’s story through court records, NAACP files, and Black newspaper accounts, revealing the complicity of law enforcement and indifference of national leaders.
• Despite a citizens’ committee finding substantial evidence of innocence and securing a recommendation for commutation, Brown was executed after the Attorney General and President ignored these conclusions.

Notable Quote:

“I don’t…this is the most dense chapter in the book. It’s also this, like, microhistory that I…felt kind of duty bound to tell this story and…honor Henry Brown and Laura Wheatley and Emma Truxen and…these folks.”
—Michael Casiano [61:11]

The Black Press and Policing Intimacy

[62:27 – 71:28, Chapter 6]

• Casiano turns to the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper to reveal the realities behind vague arrest statistics—arrests for “disorderly conduct” often masked the policing of interracial relationships and domestic spaces.
• The police wielded broad discretion to harass and criminalize ordinary Black life, especially in response to interracial intimacy.
• The episode recounts the killing of Charles Edward Williams by an off-duty police officer in Williams’ home, with the commissioner backing the patrolman, illustrating that not even the private home was safe from police violence.

Notable Quote:

“The protections that should adhere to citizens in their own homes don’t protect Black Americans in their own homes.”
—Michael Casiano [70:19]

Audience and Lessons

[71:28 – 76:00]

• Casiano wrote the book for Baltimore residents, students, and anyone interested in urban or policing history.
• He hopes the book illuminates how police power embeds itself within municipal governments, shaping responses to all forms of social conflict.
• The work aims to serve current activists and grassroots organizations by providing historical context for contemporary struggles over policing and abolition.

Notable Quote:

“There’s so much that has to be disentangled…in the structures of government, particularly local government, to realize a sense of justice or reform or abolition…because [the police] are so embedded in the legal architectures that form our city charter.”
—Michael Casiano [75:10]

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On the archival work:
  “Shout out to every archivist on earth. They are so important for us to do and to write these books.” [51:39, Casiano]
• On structure and audience:
  “I wrote this kind of with and for [students].” [16:44, Casiano]
• On systemic policing:
  “All cities are the carceral city.” [18:31, Casiano]
• On the contemporary relevance:
  “You have to write these books in a way…that advanced undergraduate students…might be able to shed light on the contemporary.” [74:06, Casiano]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 02:16 – Cover image & "Facing the Masks"
• 08:13 – Defining "police state" and "police power"
• 13:27 – Book structure, teaching, and writing approach
• 17:31 – Why Baltimore? Systemic and local context
• 22:58 – "Bummers," vagrancy, and carceral expansion
• 29:48 – Progressive reformers (Charles Bonaparte, etc.)
• 38:33 – Social work, “friendly visiting,” and attendance officers
• 47:50 – Courts, the case of Henry Albert Brown, archival detective work
• 62:27 – The Black press and policing Black life/interracial relationships
• 71:28 – Audience, lessons, and reflections

For further reading:
Michael Casiano’s Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore’s Police State (University of Illinois Press, 2025) is available now.