The Detroit Police Officers union is warning people that they enter Detroit at their “own risk.” Due to cuts, the police force is now “grossly understaffed,” overworked, and unable to adequately protect the public in one of America’s most notoriously vicious cities.

On October 6, Detroit police officers were handing out and posting notices reading: “Attention: Enter Detroit at Your Own Risk.” The notices highlighted the fact that Detroit’s homicide rate—which was already the highest in the country—has jumped 11 percent from 2011. The flyers also labeled Detroit as the most violent city in America.

The notices seemed to be an attempt by the police to shame city officials as contract negotiations continue and forced layoffs look increasingly likely. Police officials say that not only has pay been slashed, but staff numbers have already been cut to the point that officers are being forced to work 12-hour days. Additionally, union president Joe Duncan says that Detroit officers are the lowest paid in any big city.

“Detroit is America’s most violent city, its homicide rate is the highest in the country and yet the Detroit Police Department is grossly understaffed,” said Detroit Police Officers Association Attorney Donato Iorio. “The dpoa believes that there is a war in Detroit, but there should be a war on crime, not a war on its officers.”

“These are the men and women who we look to protect us … and police officers can’t protect you if they’re not there. Officers are leaving simply because they can’t afford to stay in Detroit and work 12-hour shifts for what they are getting paid …. These police officers are beyond demoralized, these officers are leaving hand over fist because they can no longer afford to stay on the department and protect the public,” he said.

“The explosion in violent crime, the incredible spike in the number of homicides and for officers trying to work 12 hours in such deplorable, dangerous and warlike conditions is simply untenable,” he said.

On Monday, it was announced that Detroit’s chief of police Ralph L. Godbee Jr. resigned over having an affair with an internal affairs officer. It was Detroit’s second police chief in a row to resign over misconduct. Less than two years ago, Police Chief Warren C. Evans resigned. Mr. Godbee’s resignation comes as Detroit’s former mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick (who resigned in 2008) is on trial for lying under oath about his misconduct while in office.

The sad fact is that Detroit is a city that may be facing irreversible decline. Years of mismanagement and corrupt city officials has turned one of America’s most prosperous cities into a crumbling, crime-ridden post-industrial ruin. Police unions may be crying about cuts now, but it was the public unions themselves that helped bring their own doom. Years of coercing politicians into giving them outrageous salaries and retirement benefits are now taking their toll on public finances. It is these pension-type costs, along with the sky-high tax rates, that are busting the city, and that have driven out and destroyed many jobs.

Coupled with the breakdown in families, a terribly dysfunctional education system, out-of-control gangs and drug usage, Detroit is becoming America’s first failed city.

Without a functioning, trustworthy police force, the breakdown in law and order in Detroit will get much worse before it gets better. More ominous, however, is that Detroit is a harbinger of what is happening in other cities too, as years of corruption are increasingly breaking budgets.

You won’t have to wait long. According to the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, New Orleans has surpassed Detroit’s homicide rate—which makes them both more dangerous than notoriously violent Kingston, Jamaica and Cuiabá, Brazil. According to the report, people have a higher chance of being killed in Baltimore than Johannesburg, South Africa. St. Louis is more dangerous than Mosul Iraq, or Panama City, Panama.

Bible prophecy indicates that due to violence and riots, America’s cities will burn from within.

As Gerald Flurry wrote in 2002, “[A]s the U.S. and Britain become less and less competitive worldwide, unemployment will steadily increase. As that happens, domestic rioting and violence will become much more prevalent” (Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet).

When times are good, it is easier for family division and racial strife to remain hidden. But in times of serious crisis and distress, it doesn’t take much for this hatred and division to quickly break out into the open.

We are now in the early stages of this society-wide plague of violence and burning to strike our major cities. Detroit is a small preview of what will soon spread to major cities around America—so say the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.

But why is this happening?

God wants people to turn to Him. The destruction of America’s cities is what it takes for us to finally come to really know God. “And they shall know that I am the Lord, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them,” it says in Ezekiel 6:10. This is the big lesson God wants America and the rest of this world to ultimately learn. Until then, enter Detroit, and America’s other big cities “at your own risk.”