Public urination is never a good idea, but arresting an innocent child for doing something like that is maybe taking the law a little too seriously. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to a 10 year old in Mississippi, Fox Memphis reports.
On August 10th, Latonya Eason stopped by an attorney’s office in Senatobia, MS for some legal advice. Her two children, a daughter and her 10 year old son Quantavious, waited in the car while she was in the office. At some point, Quantavious needed to use the restroom, so he got out of the car and went to pee behind it. At the same time, a Senatobia Police officer just happened to be passing by and caught the kid peeing behind the car.
But it was no biggie; Latonya said the officer was just going to give them a warning: “I was like son, why did you do that? He said, ‘Mom, my sister said they don’t have a bathroom there.’ I was like you knew better, you should have come and asked me if they had a restroom. [The officer] was like you handled it like a mom. He can get back in the car,” she said to Fox Memphis. It wasn’t a big deal — until other officers became involved.
Eason said several other officers showed up, including a lieutenant who said that Quantavious had to be arrested and taken to jail for peeing. Eason admits her son shouldn’t have peed, but she says arresting him over it was doing too much.
“No, him urinating in the parking lot was not right, but at the same time I handled it like a parent, and for one officer to tell my baby to get back in the car, it was okay, and to have the other pull up and take him to jail? Like no. I’m just speechless right now. Why would you arrest a ten year old kid?” she said.
Quantavious said he was scared and started shaking when the officers took him to jail. Once there, they held him in a cell, charged him with “child in need of services” and then released him to his mother.
As for the Senatobia Police Department, Fox Memphis reached out to them about the citation, and its police chief released a statement that admitted that arresting the child while his mom was present was a mistake, but offered no apology. Instead it just reiterated that Quantavious broke the law:
We would like to address a recent incident involving the arrest of a 10-year-old child. In situations like these, the Youth Court Act guides how officers may deal with juveniles during enforcement encounters. The Youth Court Act allows officers to file a referral against a child as young as 7 years old if they are in need of supervision (which may also be based on delinquent acts), or 10 years old if they commit acts that would be illegal for an adult under identical circumstances (i.e., a “delinquent” act). The need to transport children from a scene depends on a variety of factors and the availability of reasonable alternatives. In this situation, an officer personally witnessed a 10-year-old child committing an act in public that would have been illegal for an adult under these circumstances.
The officer did not observe a parent on the scene during the initial contact. The mother was located at a nearby business shortly thereafter and she was advised that her child was going to receive a Youth Court Referral for this matter. The officers then transported the 10-year-old to the police station to complete the paperwork where the child was released to the mother. The child was not handcuffed during this incident. 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. Mistakes like this are a reminder in this profession as to the continual need for training and refreshers on the various topics that we encounter each day.
