There's a mighty fortress look to St Paul's AME Church in Detroit, but appearances have provided no bulwark against thieves stripping copper tubing from its air conditioning and ripping off wires.
Vandals have hit the old, red-brick church on the city's near east side nine times in nine months.
In Detroit, as in cities and towns across the US, it's open season on homes, businesses, churches, construction sites, power stations - just about anything with copper plumbing, wiring or downspouts. Thieves are even cutting down utility poles to get at the wires and knocking off fire hydrants for copper pipes.
The soaring price of scrap metal has fuelled vandalism that has disrupted power supplies and, in Detroit, left at least six people dead while trying to steal electrical wires for a few hundred dollars.
Copper prices have leaped nearly 60 per cent since February and is now crowding US$4 a pound, from less than US$1 five years ago. With the metal in plain sight, there's a powerful incentive for thefts.
'It's like money out there, just lying around,' says Bill Gainer, director of government relations for AT&T in Chicago.
Unlike murders or drug activities that thrive in troubled inner cities, copper thefts show no geographic or demographic preference. What began as an occasional police blotter item in the local weekly last year is now a national epidemic.