Up First from NPR - Israel Kills Gaza Hostages, Deflation, San Antonio Police Indictment

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

The Israeli military said it accidentally killed three hostages held in Gaza. In a statement, the army said it mistook them as a threat and fired. Just because inflation is cooling down doesn't mean prices are also going down - and they won't be any time soon. Two former police officers face murder charges after the fatal shooting of a mentally ill woman last June in San Antonio, Texas. Advocates there hope for mental health and police reform.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Israeli military says it accidentally killed three hostages held in Gaza. According to a statement, troops mistook them as a threat and fired. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. There's some good news. Inflation is on its way down, but... People are still living with high prices, and that is something that people don't like. So is there anything hopeful about the economy? The former police officers were indicted this week in the shooting death of a woman suffering mental health issues in San Antonio, Texas.

Advocates hope the case will prompt police reform there. So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. The Israeli army says it mistakenly killed three hostages being held in Gaza. They were part of more than 100 still being held there after the deadly October 7th Hamas attacks. And the humanitarian crisis in Gaza keeps getting worse.

Kat Lonsdorf is in Tel Aviv. Kat, thanks for being with us. Hey, Scott. What do we know about the hostages who were killed? Yeah, so this was a really big shock here. The Israeli military released a statement to the press at around 8 p.m. last night saying that three Israeli hostages had been, quote, mistakenly identified as a threat during combat and killed as a result. The statement said that the military began reviewing the incident immediately. You know, they said that it had only happened a few hours before, so not a whole lot was known yet. But they

released the names of the three hostages. They were three young men in their 20s. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also released a statement calling it a, quote, unbearable tragedy. And I should say, just a few minutes ago, we got a few more details in a press briefing with an Israeli military official who said that a preliminary report had been done on this incident, concluding that the soldiers involved did not follow Israel's rules of engagement and that the preliminary report had been done on this incident, concluding that the soldiers involved did not follow Israel's rules of engagement and that the hostages had been dressed as civilians in civilian clothes, waving a white flag before they were shot. Israel often says that Hamas wears civilian clothes to deceive the military.

What's Israeli reaction been like? I mean, I think we're still waiting to see the bigger picture here a little bit. You know, it's the Sabbath here, meaning a lot of people aren't on their phones. Maybe they haven't seen the news yet or aren't publicly reacting yet. But here in Tel Aviv last night, there was a kind of spontaneous late night protest. I went and watched as just more and more people joined until there were, you know, almost a thousand people, I would say, marching through the streets of Tel Aviv, yelling for others to wake up and come and join them. And when I was there, I met 37-year-old Adam Yakutieli. He's an artist here.

He told me he was full of grief and pain. I think it even more reinforces kind of what many people around me at least have been calling for, which is a ceasefire. There's no military solution to this situation. Israel is bombing its way into a corner that it won't be able to get out of. I heard that from a few people I talked to there, that they wanted the fighting in Gaza to stop, that it had to end completely. And you know, others didn't go quite that far.

30-year-old Ella Wieneker said that a new hostage exchange deal, like the one we saw a few weeks ago, had to be the top priority. We have to make a deal. Only diplomacy will work. And we need to start with saving lives first. You know, this feels like an important moment here. There's been a lot of public support here for what Israel is doing. But, you know, we'll see if this changes that.

And what about the situation in Gaza today? Well, there's been a prolonged communications blackout in Gaza for almost two days now. So it's been really hard for us or aid groups to get any information from there. But from what we know, humanitarian conditions in Gaza are dire right now. Disease is spreading. People are living in overcrowded apartments with little access to medical aid or necessities. And, you know, the World Food Program just put out a report today or recently saying that half of the households there are facing severe hunger. You know, the death toll in Gaza is around 19,000, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. And I should say also that rockets are launched toward Israel from both Gaza and Lebanon daily.

Air raid sirens go off many times a day around the country here. You know, they're usually shot down by Israel's Iron Dome defense system. But this is all happening as U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrapped up a trip here saying that this war could go on for months. And Pierce Kat Lundstorff, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Inflation is on its way down and the stock market is cheering. But regular people aren't ready to do the same. Prices are not going down anytime soon. And Pierre Scott Horsley joins us. Scott, thanks for being with us.

Good to be with you, Scott. So why haven't prices come down even though inflation has fallen? You know, inflation has fallen by about two-thirds from its peak last year, but that just means prices are going up more slowly than they had been. Economists call this disinflation, and a lot of people are dissatisfied because they still feel like they're going uphill even if the hill is not as steep as it was. They want to know when do we get to the top and get to go downhill. Lisa Cook, who serves alongside Jerome Powell on the Fed's Board of Governors,

told an audience at Duke University last month she's heard this complaint from her own family members and she knows the feeling. I'm looking around and I'm like, so when are the prices going to get back to where they were before, right? I mean, so most Americans are not just looking for disinflation. They're looking for deflation. They want these prices to be back where they were before the pandemic. But actual deflation, that is a widespread drop in prices, is probably not going to happen. And strange though it may sound, it's probably best that it doesn't. Please tell me why. Ordinarily, you only get deflation when something has gone really wrong with the economy. The last time we saw deflation in this country was in the early months of the pandemic, which

you'll remember was not a happy experience. Yes, prices were falling, but only because people were stuck at home. They couldn't go out shopping or go out to eat, and that's not what anybody would describe as a healthy economy. What's more, falling prices aren't just a symptom of economic trouble. They can actually cause trouble. And I'll give you an example. Right now, gasoline prices have dropped sharply. So even though my car is just about on empty, I am waiting to fill up in hopes the price will drop below $3 a gallon here in Washington. That's a bit of a gamble for me. But if everybody started playing that game, it could be dangerous. If people think prices across the board are going to drop, they'll probably put off spending, and if spending dries up, then the whole economy

runs out of gas. Japan struggled for years to escape the deflation trap. This is actually why the Fed sets its inflation target at 2% and not zero. It's a little buffer to avoid the risk of deflation and keep prices inching up at a healthy rate, just not so much that people have to think about it. Scott, you mentioned gasoline, which can contribute to so many prices on so many different commodities. Some prices are falling, aren't they? Sure. I mean, at any given month, some prices do go down, others go up. Over the last 12 months, egg prices have tumbled 22%, cracking the run-up that began last year when avian flu hit. Electronics is an area where we often see falling prices. You can now buy a TV as big as your living room for about what I paid for a little black and white years

ago. But even though some prices do come down from time to time, the overall cost of living tends to move in one direction, and that is up. What might it take for people to begin to feel a little less deflated? Well, the good news is even though prices probably aren't going back to pre-pandemic levels, wages aren't either. In fact, thanks to the strong job market, wages are now more than keeping pace with inflation. And over time, Powell says that rebound in buying power should help. Wages are now moving up more than inflation as inflation comes down. And so that might help improve the mood of people. Now, the psychology here is tricky.

Many people think a pay raise is something they deserve for hard work, whereas nobody thinks they deserve higher prices. But a report from the Treasury Department this week did find that the median worker's paycheck today would buy everything it did back in 2019, before the pandemic, and have money left over. NPR's Scott Horsley, thanks so much. You're welcome. Calls for mental health and police reform in San Antonio, Texas, after the shooting death of a woman with mental health issues by police last June. This week, three former police officers were indicted. Texas Public Radio's Paul Flav joins us. Paul, thanks for being with us.

Thank you. And what was this confrontation that led to the death of Melissa Perez? Yeah, Perez was having a schizophrenic episode early in the morning on June 23rd. And what was this confrontation that led to the death of Melissa Perez? Yeah. Perez was having a schizophrenic episode early in the morning on June 23rd. She was cutting the wires on exterior fire alarms at her apartment complex when the police arrived. So when they did, she fled. She barricaded herself in her apartment. They chased her.

And when they tried to get into her apartment, she started throwing things across the room. A glass candlestick finally hit one of the officers, and then Nathaniel Villalobos, Eleazar Alejandro, and Sergeant Alfred Flores opened fire, and bullets from Alejandro and Flores struck and killed her. The men were quickly terminated by the department, who said that they violated policy and protocol, and videos do show that they never really attempted to de-escalate the situation, that they continued to pursue the woman who was clearly in crisis and on Thursday, a grand jury indicted the three men. And Villalobos faces an aggravated assault charge while Flores and Alejandro both face murder one charges. Villalobos says he's innocent and he'll fight the charge. The others did not respond. Paul, how unusual is it to have officers or former officers now indicted on charges like this? It's very unusual. Police prosecutions are highly contentious and political and nationwide.

You don't see it very often. Researchers at Bowling Green State University found under 2% of on-duty officers who shoot and kill someone are charged with murder or manslaughter. And this district attorney has secured three other indictments for cops in the last two years for shootings. And and one of those he immediately dropped saying just didn't think he could win. What's been the reaction to the indictment? It's been mixed because, you know, the family and mental health advocates and police reform advocates, they're grateful that they're being held accountable. But they say the city's backsliding on efforts to prevent a future tragedy. And Doug Beach with the National Alliance on Mental Illness says the city's misusing specialized police mental health units designed to deal with the city's 30,000 crisis calls each year. Instead, he says the city's using these units as backup and trainers

for unrelated issues. And uniformed patrolmen continue to respond. Here's Beach. Melissa Perez paid for this lack of protocol with her life. And it's also ruined the lives of the police officers that were involved, who should not have been sent to the scene to handle this type of call. In the meantime, the DA expects to go to trial the second half of next year. Paul Flav is the accountability reporter for Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. Paul, thanks so much. Thank you. And that's up first for Saturday, December 16th, 2023. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon.

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