"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" is a phrase originally used by Walter E. Headley, the police chief of Miami, Florida, in response to an outbreak of violent crime during the 1967 Christmas holiday season. He accused "young hoodlums, from 15 to 21", of taking "advantage of the civil rights campaign" that was then sweeping the United States. Having ordered his officers to combat the violence with shotguns, he told the press that "we don't mind being accused of police brutality". The quote may have been borrowed from a 1963 comment from Birmingham, Alabama police chief Bull Connor. It was featured in Headley's 1968 obituary published by the Miami Herald.
The quote was similarly used and possibly repeated by Headley himself in response to the 1968 Miami riots. Variations of the quote were subsequently used by other political figures, such as Alabama governor George Wallace, Philadelphia police commissioner and eventual mayor Frank Rizzo, and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, and in 2020 by U.S. president Donald Trump.
Headley's quote was initially criticized by The Miami Report for exacerbating the violence in the 1968 Miami riots. The quote was brought under scrutiny by the U.S. Congress in response to the 1968 Washington, D.C., riots. It was also scrutinized in retrospect to the violence caused during the 1980 Miami riots. Trump's usage of the quote during the 2020 George Floyd protests was flagged by Twitter for encouraging violence, and it was criticized by various politicians of U.S. cities and states. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to remove Trump's use of the phrase in a Facebook post led to criticism and protests by Facebook employees.
Walter Headley, 1967 Chief Walter Headley was characterized in The Miami Report about the 1968 Miami riot for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence as a "strong-minded, hardworking police chief" who "carried virtually unchanged into the late 1960s policies of dealing with minority groups which had been applied in Miami in the 1930s and even earlier". This was an apparent reference to policies promulgated by Headley's predecessor, Chief H. Leslie Quigg. Howard University political science professor Clarence Lusane stated that Chief Headley "had a long history of bigotry against the Black community".
Response to the long, hot summer of 1967
During the civil unrest in the United States that occurred during the long, hot summer of 1967, which were in part racially motivated, several nascent riots in Dade County, Florida, were stopped before they could start through the effort of local community leaders. However, law enforcement personnel began to prepare for further violence, as the causes of the unrest were never addressed and promises made by leaders went unfulfilled.
The first known use of the phrase was in a press conference held by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, on December 26, 1967. Headly announced that six three-man teams of officers equipped with "shotguns and dogs" would respond to the "young hoodlums" from "Negro districts" in Miami with lethal force and stated "his men have been told that any force, up to and including death, is proper when apprehending a felon". In a pithy soundbite during the post-statement interview with reporters, Headley claimed that Miami had avoided "civil uprising and looting" because he had "let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts".
Headley stated: "Felons are going to learn that they can't be bonded out from the morgue." Florida Governor Claude Kirk expressed his support for Headley's tactics: "Let them all know they will be dealt with [harshly]. We have the weapons to defeat crime. Not to use them is a crime in itself." Headley added "we don't mind being accused of police brutality." In a follow-up press conference, Headley refused to say whether the policy of shooting looters would only be applied to Blacks, given his previous stances, leading to a heightened state of fear among the Black communities of Miami.
A paraphrased version of his December 1967 remarks was quoted in his 1968 Miami Herald obituary: "There is only one way to handle looters and arsonists during a riot and that is to shoot them on sight. I've let the word filter down — when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Anecdotes were shared that City of Miami police officers had started aggressively enforcing its stop-and-frisk law by stopping Black males in public with no pretext, calling them belittling or racist epithets, then demanding identification and their purpose. Three weeks after the new policy started, Chief Headley declared that it had caused the violent crime rate to fall by 60%. In contrast to the continuous harassment by Miami police officers, the Dade County Public Safety Department built relationships between its deputy sheriffs and the Black community; although both the City of Miami and Dade County were judged to have effectively maintained order, the Miami Police Department were perceived to have revived prior racist policies.
According to Lusane, Headley might have actually borrowed the phrase from infamous Birmingham, Alabama, police chief Bull Connor. Connor had declared in 1963 he would use dogs and fire hoses to quell unrest.
Response to 1968 Miami riot
In August 1968, riots broke out in Miami, at the time of the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. The first riot started in the Liberty City area on August 7 at approximately 6:30 p.m., marking the first major incident since Headley's get-tough policing policy had been announced in December 1967. continuation, page A-2 Black organizations had called for a noontime mass rally for "Blacks Only", attracted by rumors that Ralph Abernathy and Wilt Chamberlain would be speaking. As the crowd grew that afternoon, police responded and became the target of the crowd's ire. Traffic controls were enforced at 5 p.m. and the rally turned violent after the driver of a car with the sticker "George Wallace for President" blundered into the roadblocks, panicked, and abandoned the car, which was subsequently flipped and set ablaze. Rioting and looting was quieted by the police by 8:15 p.m., without significant incident. Politicians (including the Mayor of Miami, Stephen P. Clark; Mayor of Metropolitan Dade County, Charles Hall; Governor Kirk; and Ralph Abernathy) arrived and urged the crowd to negotiate peacefully, and with the officials' promise to meet to hear the community's grievances at 11 a.m. on August 8, the crowd dispersed.
After the politicians reneged on their promise, the riot reignited on August 8. That day, in two separate incidents, two Black adults were killed by gunfire in Liberty City in the afternoon, then another was killed in the Central Negro District just before midnight. continuation, page A-8 A New York Times article published November 29, 1970, blamed Headley's approach for "three dead and a score wounded" during the riots. Headley was on vacation in the North Carolina mountains during the riots and refused to return to Miami, asserting that "my officers know what to do. They can handle the situation." The same article from 1970 also stated that Headley had repeated the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" during the 1968 Miami riots, although contemporary coverage only brought up that line as Headley's stated policy from the December 1967 press conference. The Miami Report squarely blamed Headley's policies for exacerbating the violence of the riots.
Following Headley's death in 1968, the "hardline-policy chief of the old school" was replaced by Chief Bernard L. Garmire, as part of an "attempt at racial introspection" which had included consulting a federally-funded social science study to examine what "engenders" white police officers' deep "fear and hatred of Blacks". In 1971, Garmire put 24 police dog units on full-time duty to combat "the specter of urban guerrilla warfare", adding that he had not rescinded Headley's order to carry shotguns, but denied that he would be adopting his predecessor's philosophies: "There will be no promiscuous shooting or turning of dogs on people."
Headley's comment and policy were the subject of congressional testimony about the 1968 Washington, D.C., riots in a question asked by congressman John Dowdy to police chief Patrick V. Murphy.
Contemporary views, 1967–1968 Chief Headley's justifications of deadly force against rioters were echoed by other nationally prominent politicians, including presidential candidate George Wallace (in 1967/68), Philadelphia police commissioner Frank Rizzo (1968), and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (1968).
George Wallace, 1967–1968 Wallace's speeches during his 1968 Presidential campaign were widely publicized to contain similar sentiments as early as September 1967.
Journalist John Pilger published an interview with Wallace in 1986, which Pilger dated to summer 1968. During the interview, Wallace said he would issue orders similar to Headley's, authorizing deadly force against looters: "Nigra or white starts lootin' and bam, bam, I'd have 'em shot on the spot. Yessuh, there'd be orders to shoot to kill if anyone so much as hurls a rock at a police officer. 'Don't shoot any chillun,' I'd tell 'em. 'Just shoot that adult standin' beside the kid that throws the rock.' That may not prevent the burnin' and lootin' but it sure will stop it after it starts."
Frank Rizzo, 1967–1968
Although Frank Rizzo was credited by President Donald Trump with coining the phrase or "an expression like that" in a 2020 interview with Harris Faulkner, Rizzo never said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Rizzo served as the police commissioner of Philadelphia from 1967 to 1971, then resigned to run a successful campaign for mayor that year, serving from 1972 with a second term, until 1980. He was noted for his strict policies to prevent riots: "Hoodlums have no license to burn and sack Philadelphia in the name of civil liberties and civil rights activities." Rizzo further explained his preventive tactics, which included stationing snipers on rooftops and deploying anti-riot squads armed with shotguns and machine guns, in an article published in the March 1968 issue of Esquire written by Garry Wills. One key to Rizzo's tactics was keeping police officers on standby for rapid deployment if necessary, which met with great approval from his peers. Another aspect was Rizzo's willingness to use "absolute force" to suppress riots. Rizzo's policy on quelling riots was paraphrased and quoted in the report Firearms, Violence, and Civil Disorders (1968).
His policies were credited with preventing serious rioting in Philadelphia during the summer of 1967, while cities with a similar proportion of Black Americans, such as Detroit and Newark, were affected. The next year, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. all experienced significant riots in April 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a contemporary analysis by Drew Pearson gave credit to "one of the toughest cops in the USA", Commissioner Frank Rizzo, and his "well integrated" police force for preventing similar rioting in Philadelphia.
Rizzo also was accused of encouraging brutal police tactics, which he denied: "I don't believe in police brutality and 99 per cent of the police have no part of it. Sure, there are isolated cases when a cop goes overboard, but who knows the right amount of force to use—and when?" Rizzo later clarified: "Our policemen are cool-headed professionals. We only use sufficient force." However, the club-swinging police action led by Rizzo that broke up the November 1967 Philadelphia student demonstration resulted in a suit which alleged that excessive force had been used. The suit would be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Richard Daley, 1968