I have never understood the concept of "hate crime" legislation. Since we have freedom of thought and speech, we have a tradition of prosecuting people based on their actions. Assault is assault, murder is murder and for each the criminal should receive punishment. Now with "hate crimes" we also prosecute them for their thoughts in addition to their actions. Is the next step to move to criminalizing the "hate thought" itself? When that day comes our freedom of thought and speech will be gone.

All of us have thoughts from time to time that would offend others or be regarded as hateful. Thank goodness we also have the intellect to control those thoughts and not act on them. The rest of the world sees our ACTIONS and judges us on that, not the thoughts.

Sometimes we are so focused on building rules for those we don’t like that we forget that those same rules might be used against us!

I think a chance to make a difference is all this new chief is looking for and asking for. You're asking him "what is he thinking" and "what city is he speaking for". He's speaking for this city and he's thinking into the future because he's looking at how the crime here has progressed just since he's taken over. Even if it's only progressed slightly and things are "relatively calm" as one blogger put it, he's trying to put things in place for our city where he and his officers will be able to charge someone with something more substantial than disorderly conduct when and if these types of crimes do rear their ugly heads.

Why don't we think back for a minute and remember the chief he replaced and remember how little we heard anything from him or about him until the scandal broke loose. Why do you think that was? Because he didn't get out into things and try to make a difference or even act like he cared about what was going on unless it got his name in the paper. If you worked within the justice system in Fayette then you would understand the need for a chief and sheriff that want to step up to the plate and try to prepare this city and county for crimes like this because you would see how each crime that comes up seems to escalate ever so slightly. All I'm saying is don't fault him for trying to look ahead and be prepared for something that hopefully will not happen here but is probably going to. The fact remains that there are still some very prejudiced, biggoted and backwards people around here that will commit some sort of crime against someone for being a certain color, creed, religion, etc. No, thinking it doesn't make it a crime but if someone out there is going to think it then they will do it!!! I can't remember the young man's name that was beaten, tortured and left tied to a fence in a pasture to die because he was gay but Hilary Swank played him in a movie, don't you think his parents were glad that laws like this one the chief is fighting for existed. Just give him a chance.