Gang Threats

Chaos is at our Door: Why a dangerous world is closing in. (Part 3 of 5)

It’s not just enemy state actors, like foreign terrorists, but also foreign and domestic drug cartels and criminals that are responsible for the growing threats faced by Americans. America’s police community knows that every U.S. city of any appreciable size already has a serious, established, drug-funded Mexican drug-cartel presence.

The Justice Department admits: Mexican drug gangs are operating in more than 1,000 U.S. cities; 20,000 gangs with at least a million members are embedded coast to coast; more than 100,000 street gang members have been documented in Obama’s hometown of Chicago alone.

Add to that volatile mix the thousands of hardened, dangerous criminals that are being released from prisons all over America. When states can’t or won’t spend the money needed to imprison their criminals, and those prisons become overcrowded, the courts say to set them free. So now the floodgates are open as our nation’s prisons are purged.

The U.S. Justice Department is releasing federal felons, and in California inmates are being released early. And consider this: Terrorists have known for 25 years that our southern border is so porous and unprotected that crossing into the U.S. is like crossing the street. Drug smugglers, kidnappers, human traffickers, and criminals of all kinds can invade our country from the south every day.

Where all these released criminals end up, no one knows. But you can bet on this: They’re among us, embedded throughout our society. For all you know, you pass them in your car on your way to work.

Even if you take terrorists and criminals out of the picture, chaos is an ever-present danger to Americans today, especially when you factor in the undercurrent of social unrest that seethes beneath the surface of much of our society.

How many times have we seen peaceful protests in this country degenerate into riots, looting, shootings, arsons and worse? And not all protests are intended to be peaceful.

How many times have we seen crowds turn into angry mobs after court decisions they didn’t like, sports team defeats they felt were unfair, or natural disasters that collapsed civil order?

Who among us can say with certainty that we’d never face that same kind of out-of-control mayhem and brutality in our own city or hometown?