World News: Hollow First Step from Congress, Trump administration

The top things you may have missed about policing this week

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner

Hollow First Step from Congress, Trump administration

Congress' First Step Act sounds good.

If passed it would, among other things, allow non-violent offenders to leave jailhouses and serve the last part of their sentences in halfway houses. It also encourages drug treatment and job training. All those things sound good, which is probably why they already exist. The real reform that the prison system needs, says Walter Pavlo in his Forbes piece "The First Step in Prison Reform Should be Real Reform, 'First Step' Is Not It," is more programs to help inmates transition back into society and greater availability in the low number of halfway houses already open across the country. There aren't enough of either.

Pavlo also calls Trump top adviser Jared Kushner's support of First Step, "really no step."

Officer gets 18 months probation in shooting

Kelvion Walker had his hands in the air and was unarmed when Dallas officer Amy Wilburn pointed her weapon into the vehicle Walker was riding in and shot and injured him. A criminal trial was set to begin this month. Instead, Wilburn pleaded guilty on Tuesday to discharging a firearm. The misdemeanor is lesser than the original felony charge of aggravated assault by a public servant. The officer, who was fired weeks after the 2013 incident, took the plea deal and 18 months of probation.

Walker has suffered nerve damage from the bullet that is still lodged in his body and is filing a federal lawsuit for $8 million. At the time of the incident, Walker had been riding in a vehicle he says he didn't know was stolen. After the driver fled, dash cam video shows Wilburn running toward the vehicle and shooting Walker within seconds.

Should police have hate-crime protections?

Attacks on police could put perpetrators away for life if the Protect and Serve Act of 2018, proposed by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), becomes law.

Human rights organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have called the measure unnecessary, stating that there are already laws that provide extra protections for attacks targeting cops. According to the ACLU, police officers aren't a persecuted class.

Critics of the proposed legislation offered a joint statement: "This bill signals that there is a 'war on police,' which is not only untrue but an unhelpful and dangerous narrative to uplift."

Want more on police and policing nationwide? Visit Policing the USA at policing.usatoday.com.

MOST POPULAR STORIES