Yesterday, Republican congressman Duncan Hunter removed what he considered to be an offensive mural that hung on the wall on Capitol Hill. The painting depicted police officers as pigs killing people on the streets of Ferguson. After he removed the painting, members of the Capitol Hill Police expressed their gratitude to Representative Hunter for taking the bold stance to remove the painting. Not everyone was pleased though. Representative William Lacy-a member of the Congressional Black Caucus-whose office was responsible for hanging the painting in the first place, was indignant. He reported the incident, and even suggested that Representative Hunter be arrested for theft. Ladies and gentlemen as you read this, just put all of your politics aside for a moment, and think of this for one second. A member of Congress thought it fitting to hang a picture in the halls of the seat of power in our nation, depicting police officers as pigs killing black people.

The painting is based on a false narrative, and represents something that never happened. The police officer involved in the shooting in Ferguson had his story corroborated, and he was exonerated by the Barrack Obama justice department run by Eric Holder. In the investigation that followed the shooting, evidence showed that “hands up, don’t shoot,” never happened, and members of the justice department wrote in their findings that they do not understand how something that was so patently false came to be so widely accepted as a truthful account of what happened. A year later, people still chant the “hands up don’t shoot” mantra although it is based on a lie, and the terrible depiction of our law enforcement officers continues to be encouraged by no lesser individuals than representatives sitting in the chamber of the house of representatives.

For anyone who has been paying attention, this is the modern Democratic party at its finest. This is not a fringe element of the party. This is who they are. Their record is there for anyone to examine, it is a part of the public record. These are the people that voters elect to represent them at the highest levels of Government, and this is how they choose to behave. They do not give any consideration to the effect that their actions have on the society. They never have to worry about crime waves hitting their communities because they dwell in ivory towers away from the madness of it all.

As representatives of the people they should understand better than most that (as one radio personality put it) where there is no barrier to lawlessness, lawlessness will thrive and prevail. It may be that their biggest concern is to do whatever is necessary to stay in power, so they shamelessly pander to the mob instead of being the voice of reason that they have been elected to be. Rather than use their position to bridge the chasm of distrust between the police and members of the communities that they serve, these charlatans seem to be on a mission to further the divide that often exists in many of the communities that they serve. People must stop doubting their own eyes and ears, stop making excuses for these politicians, then categorically reject them. It is only one party that employs these shenanigans, and have been allowed to get away with it for decades. It is time to hold them accountable. This simply must not be allowed to continue.

It is no wonder that despite all of the progress that we have made as a nation, so many black people continue to feel that they are under siege by a system designed to keep them down, contrary to all of the evidence that shows this is not the truth. When it is a centerpiece of a major political party’s platform to foster distrust between the police and the communities in which they serve, there are bound to be consequences to this insidious tactic. In the meantime the people who suffer the most as a result of this sinister ploy are the people they claim to represent. While they play this dangerous game, crime continues to rise in the communities that need a strong police presence. In addition the police have become reluctant to conduct many of the everyday aspects of policing for fear of being labeled racist, bigoted or trigger happy.

“CBS’ “60 Minutes” obtained data from inside the Chicago Police Department revealing that as killings in the city rose, police activity fell. In August of 2015, cops stopped and questioned 49,257 people. A year later, those stops dropped to 8,859, down 80 percent. At the same time, arrests were off by a third, from just over 10,000 to 6,900.”

The police know all too well that it is inevitable for violent encounters to occur in their interactions with the criminal minded elements of society, and that sometimes things simply go awry, or wrong. Life on the streets can be very unpredictable! In a job that could be highly stressful, where quick thinking is often required and split second decision making is often a feature of the job, the police are more hesitant to engage because they are worried about being the object of a witch hunt.

In a Representative Republic as the United States, people will have differing opinions about how to govern, but the radical leftist politics embraced by the Democratic party, where representatives think that it is ok to depict the police as pigs on the walls of the Capitol cannot be allowed to find a home and feel comfortable, regardless of what your political philosophy is. They should be shamed into conducting themselves with more honor.