"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".
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).
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Ike (2008), Sandy (2012), and Harvey (2017),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".
2020, in response to George Floyd protests, President Donald Trump used the phrase in a tweet on the evening of May 28–29, 2020, in response to increasingly violent nation-wide and international protests in response to the murder of George Floyd.
In the aftermath of Trump's tweet, Lori Lightfoot and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the then-mayors of Chicago and Atlanta respectively, both stated that Trump was giving a dog whistle to what they considered his racist base, authorizing the use of vigilante violence to quell rioting.
