Madison alderman — 19 of the 20, anyways — are busy investigating police, not fighting crime.

• Those 19 city leaders raided the Emergency Snowplow Fund to spend $400,000 to investigate a police force nationally recognized as one of the most “progressive” in the nation.

• Led by the far-Left Progressive Dane political party and Black Lives Matter, they have brought Chief Koval up on spurious charges before the Police & Fire Commission, forcing the chief to spend $12,000 (and counting) of his personal funds to defend himself.

• They have criticized the arrest of a young woman who threatened mall employees with a butterfly knife and then resisted lawful arrest.

The Council’s Subcommittee on Police & Community Relations has compiled a List of approved reading —  53 articles in all. Except for the first three (and maybe one other), the citations are antagonist to police, often virulently so.

The Approved List is chock-a-block with reports of anti-police sit-ins, vigils, protest marches, and lawsuits. The citations are the work of fringe campus protest groups and known anti-police activists, socialists and radicals — to the exclusion of most mainstream civic commentators.

A few of the more redolent titles prove the point: “Abolish the Capitol Police,” “Koval Needs to Resign,” “Nationwide Solidarity Action,” “Stage Play Depicts Impact of Police Brutality,” “A Warning to our Nation’s Police,” “Our System for Prosecuting Cops is Broken.” Yadda, yadda. Sheesh!

Their sources are one-sided: MSNBC, Smerconish, David Couper, Amelia Royko Maurer, something called “Malcontends,” The Socialist Alternative, The Socialist Workers’ Party, Huffington Post. If it’s anti-cop, it makes the list (again, with a few exceptions).

It may help to know that the Subcommittee on Police & Community Relations is chaired by Marsha Rummel, of Progressive Dane. (Brenda Konkel’s outfit.) She represents Willy Street. Ald. Rummel actually proposed that the City of Madison officially honor a convicted felon, high on drugs, who attacked a police officer!

The Blaska Policy Werkes has submitted the following entries for inclusion on the committee’s Holy of Holies:

The Myth of the Racist Cop; “Four studies out this year show that if police are biased, it’s in favor of blacks.” 12-24-2016.

FBI Director James Comey has again defied the official White House line on policing and the Black Lives Matter movement. The “narrative that policing is biased and violent and unfair” is resulting in “more dead young black men,” Mr. Comey warned in an Oct. 16 address to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego. That narrative, he added, also “threatens the future of policing.”

The Danger of the “Black Lives Matter” Movement April 2016

Even though the U.S. Justice Department has resoundingly disproven the lie that a pacific Michael Brown was shot in cold blood while trying to surrender, Brown is still venerated as a martyr. And now police officers are backing off of proactive policing in the face of the relentless venom directed at them on the street and in the media. As a result, violent crime is on the rise.

The Myth of Mass Incarceration; “Violent crime, not drugs, has driven imprisonment. And drug offenses usually are for dealing, not using.” 11-22-2016

Between 1960 and 1990, the rate of violent crime in the U.S. surged by over 350%, according to FBI data, the biggest sustained buildup in the country’s history. One major reason was that as crime rose the criminal-justice system caved. Prison commitments fell, as did time served per conviction.

The Myths of Black Lives Matter 11-11-2016

Apparently the Black Lives Matter movement has convinced Democrats and progressives that there is an epidemic of racist white police officers killing young black men … But what if the Black Lives Matter movement is based on fiction? Not just the fictional account of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., but the utter misrepresentation of police shootings generally.

CBS 60 Minutes “Crisis in Chicago” 01-01-2017

The number of casualties in Chicago since last New Year’s Day has surged to a level more in line with a war zone than one of America’s great cities. More than 700 people were murdered. Over 4,000 shot. … There’s been a drop in the kind of police work that law enforcement says is critical to preventing crime. Usually stops and arrests go up when violence is rising. So we went to Chicago to look for an explanation. What we found was a police department on its heels as the city suffered its worst bloodshed in 18 years.

Will the city’s news media demand an even-handed approach from the Madison Common Council in this election year? We keep hoping, don’t we? The bigger question: will the voters?