First Things First: Down Here In Tennessee, We Call That Shameful

So, right around the time I was reading the rather absolutely appalling latest from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office via the Knoxville News Sentinel online in the middle of the night last night, so was Katie Allison Granju reading it somewhere online on her computer.

Seriously – who’s in charge of protocol, PR, and spin control at KCSO? If it’s ultimately all up to the Sheriff himself, surely they also have some legal eagle on that payroll that says things like “Maybe you should wait ’til…” or “I would advise holding off on that until…” and whatnot. Or if not an attorney, I would guess that they probably have (as most such state and county and metro agencies do), some PR person for whom one of their primary roles in their job description is advising “yes, this is a good idea” and “uh, this is not a good idea”.

Maybe they should hire me – someone with ZERO experience other than several years of voluntarily unpaid stuff that’s been mostly me helping out musician friends – because even I, in my complete and utter ignorance about law enforcement public relations, would have had at least a shred of good sense not to:

1. Release a new public statement on their most recent findings and autopsy results to the press before notifying the listed next of kin or a family member of the deceased of the results;
2. Release said statement late on Friday night (the time stamp on the KNS article was midnight EST) when they know good and well the family is laying their son to rest on Saturday.

The first – if not a legal issue and an outright violation of something – it’s overwhelmingly a questionable move, and most definitely highly unprofessional no matter how you look at it. KCSO has obviously taken the offensive regarding this case, but that shouldn’t just give them carte blanche to ignore what is obvious to anyone with a working brain the more appropriate thing to do in such a case (and, I suspect, is probably in their protocol and someone just chose to ignore it or find some excuse not to follow it because they were pissed off).

The second is just plain a matter of class and decency. Since it was at or almost freakin’ midnight on a weekend (Friday night) when that statement was released to the press – it could have waited until Monday. Or at least Sunday, or – at the very least – late Saturday afternoon or evening, and AFTER Henry Granju’s memorial service, to release those results to the press, especially since obviously no one was going to notify Henry’s mother or father of the results first before making them public. No class – no class at all, and most well-mannered human beings with any class and decency would agree.

KCSO may well have been within their rights to do both – releasing the statement publicly without talking to the parents first, and releasing it however and whenever they wanted to. Does that make it right? Heck, no, not in any decent society.

Which I’d like to think, simply by virtue of being down here in the South, we tend to at least handle some stuff with a little more care, sense and common decency than some other places maybe do sometimes. It shouldn’t be that way, no – everybody everywhere should have common decency – but still, we in the South do tend to do a little better than some at treating “acting decent” as sort of an unwritten law that pretty much just everybody knows. (Though obviously not everywhere in Knox County, huh…)

And whether or not it was within their rights to do both, it doesn’t change the fact that their actions still appear questionable on a moral and ethical level (at the very least) and completely without class, and are going to appear to anyone with (A) sense and (B) any interest in this case in support of the family (and probably some who weren’t, or didn’t really care either way before) to have been exacted the way it was on purpose, and out of offense at perhaps feeling “under fire” right now.

It’s simple, really. Very, very few people are going to look at the news of the preliminary autopsy results this morning, when they open up their paper or turn on the morning news, and NOT think:  You know, that could have waited until Henry was laid to rest today. People that knew him or his family, people that don’t, and pretty much everyone else with any sense of common decency.

Even those who really aren’t and haven’t been interested at all in the case and don’t/haven’t care either way -  it’s not going to go unnoticed to a lot of them either. Totally besides the people that were already mad and upset about all this stuff with Henry’s case yesterday – there’s going to be heads shaking and “tut-tut”-ing all over East Tennessee (and elsewhere) who couldn’t have cared one way or the other all that much yesterday. Guarantee it.

Then there will be those who learn that the latest results were released to the media without notifying either parent first, and that Henry’s parents found out the latest results just like the rest of us did – and pretty much most every one of those people is going to think, well, THAT was a shoddy (I’m trying hard not to curse here) thing to do.

Especially to a mother and father who are laying their dead child to rest today.

Come on. PR/Spin Control/WhoeverPerson (or the Sheriff, if it was ultimately up to the Sheriff) should have known all that. It ain’t rocket surgery (borrowing a favorite phrase from a favorite friend) to figure that one out. It wasn’t a matter of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t, damned whatever you do” with this particular piece of the whole shebang.

It’s just plain common decency, class, good morals and ethics. That’s all. Nothing more than that. Well, and professionalism too, yes.

Yeah, a lot of people were going to be upset and angry and outraged about that press statement anyway, no matter when nor how it was released. No doubt. It probably wasn’t going to calm too many people down too much.

But releasing that statement to the press before notifying the parents, and releasing it mere hours before Henry’s memorial service – on a weekend, late on a Friday night, no less – instead of waiting until Monday? Or at least Saturday afternoon or evening after the young man was laid to rest?

I grew up with an absolutely darling young lady who was plenty book smart, but just had absolutely no common sense whatsoever. Some people are just like that.

And some folks, bless their hearts – we all know the odd person or two or three who just wouldn’t know the difference between class and no class even if they had to spend twelve years studying that and only that. Even people who act without class at times usually really do know the difference. But still, there’s some out there that really and truly just don’t know any better.

Perhaps that’s the case here – that someone just doesn’t know any better and wouldn’t know class if it bashed them in the head and gave them a skull fracture and a closed head injury. If so, what do you do about that, other than hope one has advisors around that can discourage such a massive faux pas before it gets out, which obviously isn’t the case here.

But whatever the case may be with how and why things went down as they did, the problem NOW is this – the majority of folks out there are going to look at what’s happened overnight and see that press statement as either a deliberate, offensive move on the part of the issuer, or a move made totally without class, ethics, or decency. Most people will see it as both.

Whether it was truly deliberate or not is beside the point. And it’s too late to take it back – and really, any more spin or damage control on that’s just gonna make it worse. This kinda thing is just one of those things you really can’t fix – not in the public eye – other than maybe apologizing and moving on from there.

And even if those responsible just really and truly didn’t know any better – I can’t imagine that someone that DID know better didn’t advise them against it, and advise them to wait.

You have a county agency up there that has been under fire for a good while now for things completely unrelated to this particular case, and even more under the microscope this past week because of this case – and somebody makes a boneheaded move like that last night?

If the good people of Knox County decide they’ve finally had enough – and a whole lot more of them are going to be outraged this morning when they weren’t at all yesterday, and the rest are gonna be a lot more outraged than they were yesterday – those responsible for issuing that horribly ill-timed and poorly handled statement to the press aren’t going to have anyone to blame but themselves. Period.

It really just all boils down to one word, which is the one my Grandmama probably would have been shaking her head this morning and saying, were she still alive and reading that press statement hours before that young man is being laid to rest – “Shameful.”

My grandmother would have said it, my great-grandmother would have said it. Your grandmother would have said it too probably, or something like it.

Point being – so, probably, would have their grandmothers and great-grandmothers too.

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