When the looting starts, the shooting starts

rdf:langString When the looting starts, the shooting starts

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rdf:langString Race riots of 1967

rdf:langString realDonaldTrump

rdf:langString right

rdf:langString — Chief Walter E. Headley, Miami Police Department

rdf:langString — Commissioner Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia Police Department

rdf:langString "We don't mind being accused of police brutality. They haven't seen anything yet.

rdf:langString "Ninety per cent of our Negro population is law abiding and wants to eliminate our crime problem. But 10 per cent are young hoodlums who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign.

rdf:langString "This is war. I meant it, every bit of it."

rdf:langString "Community relations and all that sort of thing has failed. We have done everything we could, sending speakers out and meeting with Negro leaders. But it has amounted to nothing.

rdf:langString "We haven't had any serious problems with civil uprising and looting because I've let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts. These are my orders: Not three days after, but now.

rdf:langString Miami Report

rdf:langString press conference .

rdf:langString quoted in Esquire

rdf:langString ....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

rdf:langString "... All I can say is that the first bottle thrown, the first brick thrown, the first Molotov cocktail, the first time police are fired on, force will be met with force—and I'm tired of hearing this 'just a little bit more force.' If they fire on us, I assure you we won’t use the least amount of force. We have to use force just as the Army does. It's war. But I don't think we will ever need federal troops. We're becoming familiar with guerrilla tactics, and we have the weapons to fight a war. I consider myself an expert in city warfare, and I don't know of any problem we can't handle. We may have a riot here, but it will be the shortest riot in history."

rdf:langString 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. Quite apart from more basic legal and ethical problems, the greatest failings of this policy are that it creates grievances which can accumulate until they actually cause a riot and that the training and equipping of police for the application of such a policy does not prepare them to cope with a major riot once it starts. 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. And once a riot starts, police dogs sitting in their mobile cages or shotguns sticking out of the windows of police cars — the most usual modes of display — will have little or no effect on the rioters.

rdf:langString "... There will be no backing off of police here. Force will be used. The real troublemakers cannot be satisfied. They just take attempts to meet their demands as a form of weakness. You have to meet them with absolute force.

rdf:langString [...] We think, in short, that the use of instruments of terror to hold potential disturbances in check eventually fails to hold them in check and then is of little or no use in quelling a disturbance once it starts.

rdf:langString "Any big city that doesn't have enough manpower to move in fast, in numbers, is in real trouble. Of course, if you move in and just stand there, the numbers do you no good. Tell the crowd to disperse; give them fair warning. But if they don't obey, they should be taken on, immediately. The man to go after is the one that shouts 'Burn!' or 'Loot!' He has to be taken on, and taken on good, and put right in short pants.

rdf:langString "There's no place in our form of government for a riot, for insurrection, for anarchy. Nobody's going to loot a city here. Nobody's going to sack a city. That's a promise.

rdf:langString When the looting starts, the shooting starts

rdf:langString "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 may have been 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.

rdf:langString Chief Walter E. Headley, Miami Police Department

rdf:langString Lethal force is justified against rioters and looters

rdf:langString realDonaldTrump