What city is Chief Heaton representing?

Tue, 03/25/2008 - 3:33pm
By: The Citizen

On Good Friday at the state Capitol, Fayetteville Police Chief Steve Heaton attended a news conference as a representative of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, according to a story in the Southern Voice, a newspaper for the metro gay and lesbian community.

The news conference was sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League to complain about the General Assembly’s lack of action on passing a so-called hate crimes bill.

According to SOVO, the online version of the paper, “Supporting the ADL were several law enforcement agencies, state gay rights group Georgia Equality and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.”

Here’s what SOVO reported about the comments of Fayetteville’s police chief:

“[Heaton] said law enforcement would like to see a hate crimes bill that provided sentence enhancements similar to the current gang enhancements.

“’I would think it would give us opportunities across the board to address them,’ Heaton said. ‘Each case would have to kind of stand on its own. If you have a vandalism case as [ADL Director] Bill [Nigut] was indicating, one that terrorizes a specific community, that law would give us a chance to address that.’

“Law enforcement would like to see a specific set of rules that could differentiate between two men being randomly mugged after leaving a gay bar, and two men targeted specifically because they are gay.

‘What we have done is develop specific criteria, similar to what we did with gang enhancements,’ Heaton said. ‘Simply wearing a certain bandana or certain colors, even those kinds of things doesn’t generally get you the conviction for the enhancements, and I think that same level would apply to hate crimes.’”

In our opinion, hate crimes laws deal with what a person thinks, rather than what a person does. There are already numerous laws on the books to deal with what a person does. We don’t need any thought crimes laws. Or mind readers. A crime is a crime, no matter what a criminal is thinking.

Based on this revelation of the “thinking” of Fayetteville’s Chief Heaton, what city does he think he is representing on the days he’s not at the state Capitol standing with the supporters of hate crimes legislation?

Whatever it is — wherever his city is — there’s no law against him thinking whatever he’s thinking. And that’s a good thing, regardless of what he is — or what we are — thinking.

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Submitted by lifeinptc on Thu, 08/13/2009 - 10:50pm.

Every criminal on this planet is motivated by hate. The robbers and thieves hate not having the same possesions as those the crooks deem to be priviledged, so those presumed to be priviledged become victims. Sexual Assault victims are targeted because predators hold themselves superior to their prey. So one citizen becomes a victim because of another's anomosity towards them. And the pattern goes on and on. Whatever evil poisons the mind of a criminal is not the point. It is their conduct alone that should be judged. Thankfully our forefathers, who wrote the laws which have kept us civilized up to now, had the wisdom to know the root of the intent doesn't matter. It only matters that the intent to commit the crime was there. Once the crime occurs each should be punished the same as the other, based on ones conduct and not the demons in their head that motivated the act.

Shoebox's picture
Submitted by Shoebox on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 8:46am.

AND I do uphold Chief Heaton for taking a stand for tougher and more defined laws.


Submitted by 30YearResident on Sat, 03/29/2008 - 5:49pm.

I thought Johnny Roberts was a bad Police Chief in Fayetteville, but this guy makes Chief Roberts look like a genius!

Hate crime legislation (or "thought crime") is one of the most rideculeous pieces of horse dung that's ever been thought up by the looney left.

Also, note that it is a bigoted based charge anyway.

Not only should this type of legislation be thrown out, but maybe the Fayetteville police chief should be thrown out with it.

Submitted by lifeinptc on Tue, 03/25/2008 - 10:19pm.

?

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