‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’: Trump quotes Miami police chief’s notorious 1967 warning

May 29, 2020 at 5:15 p.m. EDT

Miami Police Chief Walter Headley, left, watches Rev. Theodore Gibson, right, speak to the Miami City Commission about crime in 1967. (Jim Bourdier/AP)

In late 1967, as armed robberies and unrest gripped black neighborhoods in Miami, the city’s white police chief — a tough-talking former U.S. Army Cavalry officer who parted his hair straight down the middle — held a news conference “declaring war” on criminals.

The police, Chief Walter Headley warned, would use shotguns and dogs at his command. And then he uttered the phrase that President Trump drew from Friday morning on Twitter to denounce the unrest in Minnesota and elsewhere fueled by deadly police brutality.