When the looting starts, the shooting starts

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.[a] Howard University political science professor Clarence Lusane stated that Chief Headley "had a long history of bigotry against the Black community".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.[4]: 2–3 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.[4]: 3 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."[16][17] 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.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.[4]: 12 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.[4]: 14 It is not unfair to characterize the Headley policy as one of keeping an underprivileged and restless minority orderly and cowed by a constant visual display of force in its more ominous and symbolic forms, e.g., shotguns and police dogs, coupled with frequent harshly-executed acts of stopping and frisking or stopping for questioning, and whether consciously planned or not, occasional acts of brutality.We are not convinced that police dogs and shotguns can be used to quell a riot without widespread indiscriminate and useless bloodshed and simultaneously sowing the seeds for future disturbances."[24] 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.[25] Chief Headley's justifications of deadly force against rioters were echoed by other nationally prominent politicians, including presidential candidate George Wallace (in 1967/68),[26][27] Philadelphia police commissioner Frank Rizzo (1968),[28] and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (1968)."[33] Rizzo further explained his preventive tactics, which included stationing snipers on rooftops and deploying anti-riot squads armed with shotguns and machine guns,[33] in an article published in the March 1968 issue of Esquire written by Garry Wills.[28] 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.[34]: 44 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.[33] 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."[36] However, the club-swinging police action led by Rizzo that broke up the November 1967 Philadelphia student demonstration[37] resulted in a suit which alleged that excessive force had been used.[39] Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered police to shoot arsonists and looters during the 1968 Chicago riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968."[40] However, Headley was reprimanded for his remarks of support and later clarified that he was strictly talking about the response to riots in Chicago, not general policing in Miami,[41] and said that his officers had been instructed to "shoot when necessary".The four were part of the group that had beaten Black motorcyclist Arthur Lee McDuffie to death in December 1979 following a high-speed chase; they had initially covered up their role in his killing by reporting his injuries were caused by a traffic accident.[43] Photographic coverage of the riots in the Miami Herald included armed National Guardsmen, vigilantes, and business owners defending properties from looters.[44] In 1989, former Miami mayor Maurice Ferré was interviewed for the documentary film Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965 to 1985; during the interview, he partially blamed the attitude instilled by Chief Headley for both the armed vigilantes and the police force's inability to suppress the McDuffie riots: "There's a tradition that goes back to Chief Walter Headley whose famous statement — famous in this community and the State of Florida — is when the looting starts, the shooting starts.[46][47] In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Ike (2008), Sandy (2012), and Harvey (2017),[48] would-be robbers were warned that vigilante deadly force would be used for property crimes through hand-painted signs that read "you loot, we shoot"."[49] Reports of vigilantes shooting black Americans in New Orleans during the aftermath of Katrina had circulated since 2005, most notably centered on the Algiers Point neighborhood.[53] British street artist Banksy repurposed the same phrase in a 2018 piece depicting a stockbroker fleeing the New York Stock Exchange with bundles of cash.