Budget cuts across the country have stripped local police departments of personnel at an alarming rate. So much so that Americans from coast-to-coast are now being forced to fend for themselves.
Our latest example comes from East Oakland’s Arcadia Park, where law and order have broken down to such an extent that residents have been been left with no other choice but to band together to police their own streets.
According to one member of this neighborhood watch on steroids, it’s turning into the Wild West.
With criminals running rampant, when seconds count, police are often minutes away:
KPIX 5 cameras caught up with a half dozen neighbors in East Oakland’s Arcadia Park neighborhood Monday as they walked the streets on the lookout for crime. The vigilance has never seemed more necessary than now; 25 homes in the neighborhood have been burglarized over the last two months alone.
In a neighborhood that has started to feel like the wild west, people have even started posting “wanted” signs.
“You have to walk around in your house with a gun to feel safe here,” said Alaska Tarvins of the Arcadia Park Board of Directors.
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The people who live in the area are nothing if not gutsy, but they need help. A plan to gate their community has been stalled. With the police force stretched painfully thin, they may be forced to follow other Oakland neighborhoods and hire private guards.
“We don’t have a choice. Either die or we hire some security ourselves, because we can’t depend on the police department,” said Tarvins.
Source: KCBS San Francisco
But Oakland is not alone.
With cities, towns and their respective state governments having overspent billions of dollars over the last decade, many are so broke they have no choice but to lay off emergency services employees that include cops and medical first responders.
It’s gotten so bad in some parts of the country, that there are areas of major cities where police refuse to go.
The city of Chicago, in an effort to save money and deploy officers to more critical areas, has literally stopped taking 9-1-1 calls for crime reports such as armed robberies, car thefts, and burglaries.
With anti-gun politicians at all levels of government now attempting to disarm Americans and restrict their access to personal defense weapons, and police departments running so thin that they can no longer respond in any reasonable amount of time, criminals will only be more empowered to target law abiding Americans who are left with no means to defend themselves.
The economic malaise that includes millions of unemployed will only further add to the problem, as those with nothing left to lose will do whatever it takes to put food on the table.
We are witnessing the slow but steady degradation of law and order in this country, and it’ll soon be coming to a neighborhood near you.
The end result will be a citizenry so terrified that they will call for military intervention to help police our streets. In fact, in Illinois state representatives have already called on the governor to deploy the National Guard and residents in Detroit have followed suit.
We have yet to experience a full scale fiscal crisis on the state and local level, but it’s coming. When it does, you can fully expect nationwide crime waves to spread like wildfire.
