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.