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But as the Guardsmen and police from both Miami and Dade County, which surrounds the city, moved into the riot areas in force, the killing pattern changed. Nine blacks were either shot by the officers or struck by gunfire from unidentified sources. Allen Mills, 33, was shot five times by police at a roadblock in the riot zone. The officers claimed Mills had threatened them with a knife. Blacks at the scene contended that Mills was unarmed and had been shot repeatedly in the back. Police claimed that Elijah Aaron had first shot at them, then was killed in the return fire by the officers. They said they shot Abram H. Phillips, 21, because he was armed and running. A security guard reportedly killed Michael Scott, 17, as he looted a drugstore. Kenneth Lee China, 22, was merely standing in front of his house when a bullet stuck him in the chest, wounding him fatally. While some of these killings of blacks are already under investigation by the FBI in a sweeping Justice Department probe, top Miami police officers admitted that some members of the department had reacted unprofessionally to the widespread looting. Several policemen walked into a shopping center parking lot at around 11:30 p.m. and systematically smashed the windshields of 14 unoccupied cars with billy clubs, rifle butts and pieces of pipe. They slashed tires and spray-paint-ed LOOTER, THIEF and I AM A CHEAP NO GOOD LOOTER on the vehicles. Claimed Joe Sheely, 26, a resident of the neighborhood: "They were getting a kick out of it." Four Miami police officers were suspended from duty for the vandalism, and Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre declared, "It burns the hell out of me to see one or two bums ruin the reputation of 700 dedicated men."
Agry blacks charge that far more than "one or two bums" have used their police badges to mistreat blacks for years. Well after the emotions of many blacks had been vented in the rioting, their bitterness toward police persisted. "It's always a shame when someone gets hurt," said one 58-year-old Miami black man at a post-riot meeting, "but the police are set up to protect white people from their enemies, and that is us." John Conyers Jr., a black Congressman from Detroit, arrived in Miami and charged, "Police started a counterwar. Most of the white cops think this is a war game—that it is fun. It's on their faces."
The more immediate and practical problem facing residents of the devastated black neighborhoods, which were bleak and run down even before the burning, was where to buy food, clothing and other daily necessities. Gangs of youths filling shopping carts with meats, canned foods, liquor and clothing had been commonplace. One black man had time to lash a dining-room set to his car roof—but was arrested when the engine would not start. There had long been a shortage of shops and services in the densely populated communities. Asked one young black: "Now where people gonna buy milk? Where they gonna shop?"