Gangbanging NY police chief is a prime example of the Democratic political machine’s power

There’s a classic joke comedians love telling each other, about a family that walks into a talent agent’s office and proceeds to do filthy, vile, unspeakable things to each other.

The talent agent watches in horror, then asks the family what their act is called.

The punchline? They call themselves The Aristocrats.

Make that The Democrats: The party that used to run on mild stuff like abolishing the police and setting murderers and rapists free in the name of “social justice” has taken chaos to a whole new level, showing us what happens when you promote incompetent freaks whose only distinction is excelling at parroting the party’s lunatic ideology.

Case study: Jennifer Lackard.

Despite — or maybe precisely because of — having zero experience in policing, Democrat-run Mount Vernon hired Lackard as its Deputy Police Commissioner, a fancy title that came with a $138,219 annual paycheck.

She was tasked with running the department’s “Wellness Unit,” a squad devoted to the Democrat mantra that criminals aren’t evil or depraved but simply misunderstood souls who would abandon their dastardly ways if only some compassionate person treated their emotional boo-boos with a hot cup of cocoa rather than a long, hard prison sentence.

The fact that Lackard’s husband did time in federal prison for dealing heroin, and that her son was a gangbanger who routinely ran into violent trouble, seemed to give none of her bosses any pause.

And Lackard rewarded their trust by breaking bad, giving us all proof — grand, theatrical, irrefutable proof — of the very real danger we all face when Democrats reject common sense and treat government as one big jobs program, hiring unvetted but loyal hustlers to key roles, experience and competence be dammed.

Lackard is now in custody for helping her 20-year-old son attempt to assassinate a rival.

According to the indictment, she coached her kid in the fine art of timing a hit job just right, accompanied him — irony alert! — to the Bronx Hall of Justice where he attempted to off his gang rival, and then drove the getaway car to boot.

Not even our most clinically progressive politicians — thank the Lord — have yet gone quite so far as Lackard, who chose to turn public office into a dime-store remake of “The Godfather.”

But take a quick look at the workings of the Democratic Party machine, and it’s not too hard to understand how a disastrous lackey like Lackard could rise so fast and so far.

By constantly championing measures like cashless bail that make the streets less safe, by coddling criminals with “restorative justice” rather than the real kind, and by promoting boisterous activists rather than capable officials with proven records, Democrats put us all at risk.

The same maddening scenario plays out wherever the party’s in power.

Instead of policing, we get progressive propaganda.

Instead of leaders, we get zealots and kooks.

Instead of safety, we get more incitement, more violence and more brokenness.

Don’t take my word for it: Just ask Damon Jones, publisher of Black Westchester Magazine.

“I am embarrassed as a black law enforcement officer to see the dysfunction in a city that has a black mayor, a majority black city council, a majority black police department that we have to see continuing dysfunction and just foolery in an organization that should be so professional,” Jones told The Post.

“Unfortunately, we see this with Democrats that they put people in positions — especially in law enforcement positions — that they shouldn’t be there.”

Amen to that.

Lackard may be the most recent — and most extreme — example, but the problem she embodies is all too prevalent and all too ominous.

It’s time to root it out before we allow even more dangerous maniacs to get their hands on the levers of power.

Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.