Police: Enter Detroit At Your Own RiskMichael Snyder, Contributor Meanwhile, the number of police officers in Detroit has been steadily decreasing. There are more murders in Detroit today than there were a decade ago, but the number of police officers in the city has decreased by about 1,000 over that time period. The remaining police officers are overworked and incredibly frustrated. But Detroit is far from alone. All over the nation there are major cities that are reporting a spike in crime even as police budgets are being slashed. Sadly, this is just the beginning. As the economy gets even worse, budget cuts will become even more severe and crime will become an even bigger problem. In many areas of the country, police have become little more than report takers. If you report a crime that is not considered high priority, you will be lucky to get an officer to come out a few hours later to fill out a report. In cities such as Detroit, criminals are becoming much bolder and are openly mocking the police. For example, according to a recent WND article, one gang has literally taken over a convenience store in Detroit and the police literally seem powerless to do anything about it. Even the old-timers in Detroit never have seen anything like this: A mob of 40 black people moved into a convenience store and will not leave. They say they now own it. They eat. Smoke. Cuss. Threaten. Spit. Rob. Sell drugs. All on video. Police, ministers, neighbors, the store owner and just about everyone else seems powerless to stop them. Its a Bad Crew gas station, said one of the mob to the local Fox affiliate. If you dont know what that is, I cant even tell you. The owner calls police, but nothing happens. The police come here and then they leave. Two minutes later they (the mob) are back. What in the world has happened to Detroit? Once upon a time it was one of the greatest cities in the entire world. Now it has become a war zone. As I wrote about a while back, justifiable homicide in the city of Detroit rose by 79 percent in 2011, and the rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is now about 2200 percent above the national average. But like I said, Detroit is far from alone. In some ways, what is happening in Chicago is even more frightening. Many areas of Chicago have essentially been completely taken over by the gangs. Violent crime has dramatically increased in Chicago so far this year, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. A USA Today article from last week entitled Murders in Chicago: What can stop the bloodbath? painted a very grim picture about what is going on in the city right now. Driven by gangs, drugs and guns, the bloodshed in President Obamas adopted hometown has resulted in a body count that exceeds the 312 murders this year in New York and 212 in Los Angeles, cities with populations dwarfing that of the Windy City. The toll here is up 25% from 2011: 391 through Sept. 23. CBS News reporterWalter Jacobson recently sat down with some young gang members in Chicago and asked them some direct questions. Many of the answers that he got to those questions were quite frightening. Theres no solution to the violence, one gang member tells him. Killing, killing is the solution. When Jacobson asked them how they survive, the following was one of the responses that he received. Rob, steal and kill. Thats the only way. We didnt grow up in Beverly Hills. We dont get it handed to us But what are the police supposed to do about it? As I noted in another article, there are approximately 200 police officers assigned to Chicagos Gang Enforcement Unit to deal with an estimated 100,000 gang members. How would you like to be outnumbered 500 to 1? And the number of gang members in Chicago grows with each passing day. The violence in Chicago has gotten so bad that it is making headlines all over the globe. For example, the following is a brief excerpt from an article about the violence in Chicago that appeared in the Telegraph. This is a block-to-block war here, a different dynasty on every street, said a dreadlocked young man heavily inked in gang tattoos who calls himself Killer. All the black brothers just want to get rich, but we got no jobs and no hope. We want the violence to stop but you aint safe if you aint got your pistol with you. Too many friends, too many men are being killed. We dont even cry at funerals no more. Nobody expects to live past 21 here. When young people lose all hope for a better future they become very desperate. And very desperate people are capable of just about anything. Sadly, this is just the beginning. The other day we learned that the number of Americans on food stamps has hit another brand new record high. Nearly 47 million Americans are on food stamps at this point, and overall more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. But what happens someday if the federal government is forced to cut back significantly on those programs, or if food prices increase so much that people cant buy nearly enough food to eat with their food stamps? When people get really hungry they will do some crazy things. But the mayor of Costa Mesa, California says that he has an answer to this problem. He has proposed reducing the homeless population of Costa Mesa by putting all soup kitchens in the city out of business. The mayor of Costa Mesa proposed to get rid of soup kitchens to deal with the areas homeless problem at a city council meeting on Tuesday. My belief is that if we manage to put the soup kitchen out of business that will go a long way to addressing the attractiveness in our city thats creating a huge negative impact, Eric Bever said. Unfortunately, we are going to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the years ahead. The number of people that are really hurting is going to continue to increase, and the efforts to remove them from respectable areas is going to become more forceful. Already we have seen feeding the homeless being banned in major cities all over the country. But no rules, regulations or laws are going to be able to prevent what is coming in the years ahead. I believe that eventually we are going to see flash mobs of poor Americans storm into wealthy neighborhoods and take whatever they want. And without a doubt our society is starting to break down. What we are seeing in Detroit and Chicago right now is just the tip of the iceberg. Things are going to become much, much worse. This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 