You can help our family get justice for Henry

Many of you have asked me how you can specifically help our family achieve justice for Henry, our teenage son who died after spending nearly 6 weeks in the hospital. I am prevented from commenting much on the specifics of the investigation if I hope to keep things moving with investigators and prosecutors, but with the agreement of the Knox County DA’s office, I can now share the particulars of one element of what happened to Henry, in hopes that the public can help us.

On the early evening of April 25th (between about 6:30 pm and 8pm), Henry met several young men in Joe Foster Park at 1116 Drive D in South Knox County.

Based on the information contained in Henry’s text messages that day, it appears that was at the park to sell these young men 10 or so pills belonging to someone else. He was to then take the money back to the person who had given him the pills to sell, and in exchange he would get a pill or two himself.

(In case you are not a regular reader of my blog, you may not know that I have repeatedly and clearly said that if Henry was selling or trading pills, he should have been arrested and jailed. In no way am I saying this okay. Let me tell you, I wish to God he were in jail today rather than dead.)

After arriving at the park, Henry met up with the men, and got in a car with the young men, who proceeded to beat him badly as they drove around the area for 30-45 minutes. They also took the pills, obviously. They then threw him out of the car. The suspects have apparently told KCSO that the spot at which they put my injured child out of the car was in or around the area of Mayfield Avenue at Winstead Street in South Knoxville.

At this point, we know for certain that Henry came into contact with an adult Good Samaritan. We do not know whether Henry staggered up on to someone’s porch asking for help, or whether this person found him injured in or near the street. In any event, this incredibly kind person was worried about Henry’s condition and was nice enough to drive him back to Joe Foster Park.

So here’s where I need y’all’s help: we need to find this person before any more time has passed.

The Knox County Sheriff’s Office tells us they “canvassed” the neighborhood looking for the Good Samaritan. However, I do not have a definition of what that canvass actually involved or when it happened (I am trying to find out specifics). I know for certain that it did not involve any sort of flyer or bulletin released to area residents, and it certainly didn’t involve Sheriff Jones mentioning that they needed/wanted to find or talk to this important material witness when he took the highly unusual step of commenting directly to the media only a few days after Henry died on May 31. In his comments, Sheriff Jones indicated that they had done enough investigation at that point to declare emphatically that they had all the info they needed or wanted to decide that no one would be prosecuted for the attack. However, Sheriff Jones never mentioned that there was a “Good Samaritan” out there who definitely spent time with Henry in the time immediately following the assault, and who might have even seen him actually pushed out of the car. He never asked for the public’s help in finding this person, someone who could provide crucially relevant details into what happened to Henry, and testify as to his physical and mental condition. As the Sheriff’s office frequently asks for the public’s help in finding witnesses or suspects, this omission on his part is very odd to me.

In any event, we have now been told that the KCSO has done all they can to locate the Good Samaritan. In response, I asked for permission from investigators to try to find this person myself. And that’s what I intend to do.

We know with absolute certainty the sex, physical description and vehicle description of the Good Samaritan, but I have been asked by investigators not to share these identifying details in trying to find the person. We also know with relative certainty what kind of car the suspects were driving, but we have also been asked not to share this information. Obviously, and particularly 6 months after the fact, these descriptive omissions are going to make my job WILDLY difficult, but I am a pretty determined mama, and I ***WILL*** find this good person who took time to help Henry, and who has important information that we really need. (I am not clear why I can’t share those identifying details in looking for the person; I’ve asked the prosecutor’s office to clarify that for me.)

In the next week or three, I will be organizing a weekend-long, volunteer search of the entire neighborhood around Joe Foster Park, as well as the street intersection where the attackers told law enforcement they put Henry out of their car. I will ask as many friends, family members and concerned citizens who are willing to help me canvass a 5-15 mile area with flyers and house to house visits, trying to find this person.

But I plan to jump start the effort via social media, right now, today. So here is the message I need to get out in every corner of Knoxville and Knox County. I would be HUGELY appreciative if you would Facebook it, tweet it, print flyers and put up all over town, ask people you may know who live in that area, etc, etc etc – anything you can think of to help.

Here’s the info we have been authorized by the DA’s office to release in our search efforts:

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

On Sunday, April 25, 2010, 18 year old Henry Louis Granju (pictured below) solicited aid from a citizen in or around the area of Mayfield Avenue at Winstead Street in South Knoxville, culminating in the citizen driving Granju to Joe Foster Park located at 1116 Drive D, Knoxville TN. This interaction took place in the early evening hours on that date – likely between 6:30 and 8:00 pm.

Our family would very much like to locate this wonderful Good Samaritan who reached out to help our injured son. We want to offer our thanks, and we also want to find out what this person saw or heard when interacting with Henry inmmediately following the assault.

Additionally, we would like to learn whether anyone in that neighborhood or traveling through the area at that time directly observed Henry’s assault, or saw him being put out of a car by his assailants at or near Mayfield Avenue at Winstead Street in South Knoxville.

If you have any information to share, please call Henry’s mom, Katie Granju at 283-0395 or email her at katie.granju@gmail.com

Please help us spread the word however you can to anyone and everyone in the greater Knoxville area.

THANK YOU!

The Granju and Hickman families

In 2002, however, the number crunchers took over. When the number crunchers took over, corners began to be cut at every line of sight.

Within less than two years I watched a state of discontentment grow within the base of people with whom I had proudly worked for years.

And the public saw it too. Service levels dropped. Customer complaints elevated at an alarming rate.

Then companies and individuals who had been loyal to FedEx from the beginning started moving their business elsewhere.

FedEx is one minuscule example. One drop in the bucket in a country where the ‘number crunchers’ have been slowly but surely increasing the money staying in the corporate pockets and out of those of the workers.

For more than two decades corporations have one by one cut deeply into employee benefits, consistently hired at lower wages, leased jobs to employment agencies to eliminate their own responsibility to provide insurance, vacations, holidays…

No more company paid lunches. No Christmas bonuses. Higher paid workers (or even those close to retirement) dismissed to hire someone less experienced but lower paid,  And lackluster cost of living raises of any.

“We’re not hiring.”

Why are they not hiring? Because three people’s work is now expected to be done by one and that one job is being contracted out to a big temp agency which is not by law required to provide the worker with even the most basic and necessary of benefits such as health insurance, sick leave or even a week’s vacation per year.

There was a time when the employer understood that a healthy and well treated employee was THE most important cog in the wheel. There was a long era of American history after The Great Depression when companies truly comprehended that if the little guy at the bottom was happy, it meant their customers and vendors were well treated.

Well treated customers and vendors means RETURN customers and vendors.

There was a time when the people writing the paycheck for the guy at the bottom understood that small investments in the greasing of the corporate cogs and wheels were integral in the continuance of the American Dream.

That time is quickly slipping out of our grasp.

Welcome to the age of Trickle Up Economics.

“In 1985, the wealthiest five percent had net worth of $8 trillion, which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five percent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.”

One politician brave enough to go public is David Stockman, President Reagan’s budget director. He says all the Bush tax cuts should be eliminated.

And he says his own Republican Party has gone too far with its anti-tax religion.

“It’s become in a sense an absolute. Something that can’t be questioned, something that’s gospel, something that’s sort of embedded into the catechism and so scratch the average Republican today and he’ll say ‘Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts,’” he explained.

“It’s rank demagoguery,” he added. “We should call it for what it is. If these people were all put into a room on penalty of death to come up with how much they could cut, they couldn’t come up with $50 billion, when the problem is $1.3 trillion.”

These frank words come from Ronald Reagan’s own budget director. Stockman was the architect of the largest tax cut in American history.

“This is the result of Americans being inundated with a continuing barrage of ‘if you don’t have massive wealth you are considered worthless’- a propaganda idea started with lifestyles of the rich and famous and promulgated by a culture that is paparazzi driven to see the fabulousness of the wealthy as a governing principle of human behavior and a loss of communitarian values as a guiding principle. This was done as a way to end the value system proposed by the political wing of the seventies and a way to re-ensalve the masses to a consumer system that is disposable,” states Rick Youmans of Knoxville, TN.

Do you consider yourself and your life disposable?

Do you consider your children disposable? Your friends? Family? Your loved ones?

This is not about ‘party politics’ anymore, people. This is about what should be the common sense of every man and woman in this country. For the betterment of all is one of the most powerful phrases in any language.

The little guy at the bottom? He is one of the cogs in the wheel. He or she is someone’s loved one. And he or she is NOT disposable. NOT a worthless peasant to be relegated to a life with no healthcare, no job benefits, no happiness afforded by something as simple and basic as peace of mind.

It’s time to STOP trickle up economics, Americans. Not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as American citizens and human beings.  For the moment we still live in a country where we have the power to raise our voices and make change. If we don’t soon reclaim our voices, however… how much longer will it be before they hold no power at all?

If you are not one of the top 5%… your life has been effected. So why? Why? Why are you being so quiet?

Look around you. Has your life been personally touched by Trickle Up Economics?

Post a comment. Tell us how. Refer a friend to do the same. Speak your voice(s)… for they ARE power!!

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(CBS) Deficits: The Battle Over Taxing The Rich

Henry Louis Granju
October 7, 1991-May 31, 2010
Beloved Boy

Remember when you see or hear or read about a “drug addict” or a “junkie,” some other parent sees his or her child.

Henry was a child. Henry was addicted to drugs, and his addiction killed him before he reached adulthood.

This is what a drug addict looks like:

See Katie’s entire post on mamapundit.com…

The average person in a developing nation struggles to find 5.

Perspective.

How much do you consume?

The circle of life is highly sensitive… and very real and very serious. BP and every individual who has let every ball drop in this situation is personally responsible for how life from this point on will be changed.

It’s too far gone now to just be a matter of ‘clean up’. We passed that point weeks ago. And maybe I’m an overly sensitive, emotional fool… but it’s breaking my heart every day to watch. So quit watching, you say? No. I refuse to be one of those closing their eyes in ignorance.

It never had to be this way. I listened for years as righteous consumerists raised hell that we should open drilling off the coast as well as multiple protected areas. They screamed it was the only way to break our dependency on foreign oil.

But now what?

The answer has NEVER been in breaking our dependency on the ‘foreign’ aspect. The answer is in breaking our constant, never ending consumerist dependency on the mass amounts of oil this country consumes every day, week, year.

I know I have said this before. I will continue to say it. I will scream it over and over and over if need be.

Please tell me WHEN people are finally going to take this seriously? What is it going to take? Is this how the past two generations of mankind hoped to be memorialized in the history books? Because I can promise you now… all the advances and technology that could have been our legacy will be nothing to the wasteland we are leaving behind for future generations. If there ARE future generations even around to read the history once my generation is through with its Shermanistic way of living.

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Oil-coated baby dolphin carried to shore by tourist dies; “Dolphin was crying” as “people scraped oil off”.

We live in a world where people like to think that only kids from bad homes or bad neighborhoods get involved in drugs or alcohol. Too many people can or will not see outside this stereotype because it breaks the bubble of their comfort zone.

Katie Granju’s story, however, is going to break those comfort zones wide open. Be prepared. And don’t close your eyes because it hurts to read it… because it’s going to.

18 year old Henry Granju was beaten with a tire iron and robbed by three assailants during an attempted drug buy in the parking lot of a local grocery store last month. He died Monday from the injuries received during that assault and the following overdose of drugs ‘administered’ to him by ‘friends’ who were afraid to take him to the emergency room. When he was finally admitted to St. Mary’s hospital on April 27th, he was bleeding from his ears, with a broken jaw, broken ribs and brain injuries.

As a mother of three teens myself, reading his mama’s daily updates during his time in ICU was gut wrenching:

“05/01/2010 – HE WOKE UP!!! This morning H is talking some, although his focus, memory and attention are not what we will look for in the weeks ahead as he heals. When he said, ” Hi Mama,” when I first saw him this morning, I began jumping up and down and hollering with joy, tears streaming down my face (an entertaining sight when someone is as ginormously pregnant as I am). But those were – without question – the most important, beautiful words I have ever heard another human being utter, and I will never forget that feeling of hearing my son say them as long as I live. Best. Words. Ever.”

(Yes. You read that right. The mama who is now having to bury her firstborn child… is going through all of this turmoil while pregnant with her 5th and last child.)

For 38 days after his hospitalization, our local police department all but refused to do any serious investigation into the assault. One investigator specifically told Katie that “unless Henry could speak directly to him, then “there is no victim.” Following his admittance to the ER on April 27th, however, he was never again able to speak more than 2-3 words.

Prostitutes, druggies, homeless people… who cares? Right? Good kids don’t end up robbed and beaten during drug deals. Right? Decent people don’t end up burying their children after a drug overdose…

Wrong.

Henry was a good kid, from a good home and highly respectable parents. His mother, Katie Allison Granju, is a published author and the director of digital and social media for a local public relations group. His father, Chris Granju, is Knox County’s Director of Stormwater Management. He was not just some ‘junkie from the hood’. And no one is going to apologize if this doesn’t fit your mold. It’s reality. A harsh one that should be a wake-up call for parents across the country.

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I would also like to take a moment point out how often kids end up involved with drugs or alcohol because they are ‘self medicating’ due a hereditary yet undiagnosed or untreated illness. Something as simple as a malfunctioning thyroid can manifest as depression or anxiety. Never heard of self medicating?? Start googling!

Drug use seems to be especially prevalent in instances of undiagnosed bipolar and/or anxiety disorders… most often manifesting as extreme mood and personality changes at puberty (beyond the ‘normal’ puberty changes!). It starts with experimentation… but then leads to full time use/abuse when the user discovers that it lessens the symptoms of the undiagnosed or untreated disorder.

Bipolar has about a 25% heredity rate. And it can skip generations. (In my own family it occurred with my mother… skipped my generation… then showed up again with my oldest child when she reached puberty.) Henry’s maternal grandfather fought a lifelong battle with the disorder, so it is altogether possible that Henry’s drug use was rooted to hereditary factors over which he had little control, much less understanding of his own internal battle(s).

Be aware of your children. Watch every little thing. If there is a family history of mental, emotional or endocrine system disorders of any kind, be even more observant.

There is no manual that we’re handed when our children are born. Every parent knows this. There is no way for anyone to be 100% prepared for any and everything our children might go through. And no one deserves to be judged when they have been as exemplary parents as the Granjus and their extended family.

I sincerely hope to see something positive come from this family’s life changing loss.

I hope to see our police departments and personnel made aware of their pitfalls due to stereotyping.

Henry was just a kid, for heaven’s sake. He was not lost. He was simply in transition.

I also hope to see families (nationwide!) made blatantly aware that it COULD happen to them. Share the mamapundit.com blog link with everyone you know whose life might be enlightened by it! If it could happen to the Granjus, it could happen to you, me or someone we love.

Stay informed. Be aware of your family history as much as is possible. Communicate with your children. Watch. Love. Don’t accuse… talk. And never, ever be too full of pride to seek help if you suspect a situation is more than you can handle alone.

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Read Katie Granju’s story

Death Of Blogger’s Son Being Probed

And when you’re through with your own tears… go get your kids… and make them read it as well.

Please, please, please always be open with your kids about drugs and alcohol. Talk, talk, talk and talk some more.

Henry Granju died yesterday from injuries resulting from a drug deal gone bad. He was 18 years old… and a fellow student with my own children at West High School in Knoxville, TN.

The pictures of him are killing me. His mom’s story is killing me. Every time I look at the pictures on her blog I see my own nearly 17 year old son.

Please let the Granju’s loss not be a waste. Please let my kids and everyone else’s kids learn something… anything… from what the Granju’s are going through.

No mother should have to hurt the way Katie Granju is hurting right now.

Something positive… MUST… come from this. This mother’s loss is worth nothing if it doesn’t.

“Talk to your kids about drugs and alcohol. Talk some more. Do it today. Dig deeper. Look more closely. Trust your gut no matter what your teenager is telling you. Err on the side of doing too much rather than not doing enough. Please. I don’t want H’s [death] to be for nothing. I want other people to learn from our family’s experience.” -Katie Granju

“Give your children an extra hug today. Tell them how much you love them and how special and perfectly amazing they are. Never miss a chance to tell them that. I’d give anything if Henry could hear me telling him that now.” -Katie Granju

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Henry Louis Granju: 1991-2010

That’s the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.

It as already far exceeded the spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska in 1989.

People look at me like I am nuts when I talk about reducing my ‘footprint’. Consumption means nothing to most Americans. Nothing. Not the word… nor the act. It’s all taken for granted.

I guess people think the electricity coming into their homes and the gas at the pumps just magically appears.

In the past year we have cut our utility bills at home by more than half. No exaggeration.

I am currently working with a friend on a custom built, two-seater, covered trike… high-return human powered… with solar/generator backup.

Why human powered? Because I am so tired of being part of the ‘lazy’ generation. What better way to be mobile, give back to the earth and get into great physical condition at the same time?

In the meantime, my daughter and I have started biking anywhere we can so we’re not using fuel in the car.

Life is a very simple thing. I swear… it really is. And our constant demands of the earth and mother nature will, historically and statistically, only lead to more periodic disasters.

I have so much of the world left that I want to see. I want those same things still there for my kids and their kids and their kids to be able to look forward to.

People can go ahead and think I am nuts for drastically reducing my own usage. But it’s not as hard as people might think.

And the generations after me won’t have me personally to hold accountable when there is nothing left but rot and chaos.

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NPR Report

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too. U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who’s behind that “friend” request? Think again. Your new “friend” just might be the FBI.

The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target’s friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.

Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects’ alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the Justice Department document when it sued the agency and five others in federal court. The 33-page document underscores the importance of social networking sites to U.S. authorities. The foundation said it would publish the document on its Web site on Tuesday.With agents going undercover, state and local police coordinate their online activities with the Secret Service, FBI and other federal agencies in a strategy known as “deconfliction” to keep out of each other’s way.

“You could really mess up someone’s investigation because you’re investigating the same person and maybe doing things that are counterproductive to what another agency is doing,” said Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Conn., Police Department, a veteran of dozens of undercover cases.

A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today’s social media, which contain mountains of personal data, photographs, videos and audio clips — a potential treasure trove of evidence for cases of violent crime, financial fraud and much more.

The Justice Department document, part of a presentation given in August by top cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to government investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.

“It doesn’t really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly,” said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The group sued in Washington to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking sites in investigations, data collection and surveillance.

The foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that instructs employees on how to use to use Internet tools — including social networking sites — to investigate taxpayers. The document states that IRS employees are barred from using deception or creating fake accounts to get information, a directive the group says is commendable.Covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice Department officials. But they would not say what those rules are.

The Justice Department document raises a legal question about a social-media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account — effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.

The woman, Lori Drew, helped create an account for a fictitious teen boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to a 13-year-old neighborhood girl in his name. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her.

A jury in California, where MySpace has its servers, convicted Drew of three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization because she was accused of violating MySpace’s rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.

“If agents violate terms of service, is that ‘otherwise illegal activity’?” the document asks. It doesn’t provide an answer.

Facebook’s rules, for example, specify that users “will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.” Twitter’s rules prohibit its users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be “truthful and accurate.”

A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company’s rules. But there have to be limits, he said.

In the face-to-face world, agents can’t impersonate a suspect’s spouse, child, parent or best friend. But online, behind the guise of a social-networking account, they can.

“This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships,” said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.Undercover operations aren’t necessary if the suspect is reckless. Federal authorities nabbed a man wanted on bank fraud charges after he started posting Facebook updates about the fun he was having in Mexico.

Maxi Sopo, a native of Cameroon living in the Seattle area, apparently slipped across the border into Mexico in a rented car last year after learning that federal agents were investigating the alleged scheme. The agents initially could find no trace of him on social media sites, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico. But they kept checking and eventually found Sopo on Facebook.

While Sopo’s online profile was private, his list of friends was not. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Scoville began going through the list and was able to learn where Sopo was living. Mexican authorities arrested Sopo in September. He is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is “often cooperative with emergency requests,” the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter’s lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.

“Will not preserve data without legal process,” the document says under the heading, “Getting Info From Twitter … the bad news.”

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn’t want to be the company that stands in the way of an investigation. “That said, we also want to make sure that our users’ privacy is protected and any data that’s disclosed is done under proper legal process,” Nigam said.

MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand “the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations.”

The Justice document includes sections about its own lawyers. For government attorneys taking cases to trial, social networks are a “valuable source of info on defense witnesses,” they said. “Knowledge is power. … Research all witnesses on social networking sites.”

But the government warned prosecutors to advise their own witnesses not to discuss cases on social media sites and to “think carefully about what they post.”

It also cautioned federal law enforcement officials to think prudently before adding judges or defense counsel as “friends” on these services.

“Social networking and the courtroom can be a dangerous combination,” the government said.