10 year old black Mississippi boy Quantavious arrested for peeing behind mom’s car as Latonya Eason tells of being outraged at the handling of her son at the hands of police.
Would the 10 year old boy still have been arrested if he was white? A Mississippi mother says police went overboard after they arrested and jailed her 10-year-old son for public urination.
Latonya Eason was at an attorney’s office in Senatobia, just south of Memphis, for legal advice Aug. 10 when a cop told her he caught her son Quantavious peeing behind her car, FOX13 reported.
‘I was like, ‘Son, why did you do that?’ He said, ‘Mom, my sister said they ain’t got a bathroom in there.’ I was like, ‘Well, you knew better. You should have came and asked me if they had a restroom,’’ Eason said.
‘Why would you arrest a 10-year-old kid?’
The mother says the responding officer was going to simply offer her son a warning.
‘So, he was like, ‘Since you handled it like a mom, then he could just get back in the car,’’ Eason said.
But she says things took a turn for the worse when several other officers showed up.
“Another officer came over there and was like, ‘Your son gotta get out of the car. He gotta be arrested because he can’t do that,’ Eason said.
‘I started crying a little bit. They took me down there and got me out of the truck. I didn’t know what was happening,’ the ten year old boy said. ‘I get scared and start shaking and thinking I’m going to jail.’
Quantavious was taken to the police station, where he says he was held in a jail cell. The boy’s mom maintains cops going overboard in the handling of the incident
‘I’m just speechless right now because for one, I can’t believe it happened. Why would you arrest a 10-year-old kid?’ Eason said.
Inherent racism in the police force?
She says they charged Quantavious with child in need of services then released him to her.
‘That could really traumatize my baby. My baby could get to the point where he don’t wanna have an encounter with police – period,’ the mom said.
The police chief issued a statement, saying the officer did not see a parent on the scene during the initial contact with the 10-year-old. The mother was found at a nearby business a short time later and told her son was going to get a youth court referral.
The police chief conceded that taking the boy to the police station was a mistake.
‘Under these circumstances, it was an error in judgement for us to transport the child to the police station since the mother was present at that time as a reasonable alternative,’ he said.
The police chief added the boy was not handcuffed during the incident.
