A 10-year-old boy who was arrested by police for urinating behind his mother’s car while waiting for her in a public parking lot received three months’ probation Tuesday, which fortunately will not appear in his case.
“He did what any reasonable person would do: he urinated next to the car behind the door – without exposing himself to anyone. He would not have been arrested, prosecuted or convicted if he was of any color or race other than black,” lamented the family’s lawyer, Carlos Moore, to NBC News.
On Tuesday, young Quantavious Eason, 10, had to appear in the Tate County Juvenile Court in Mississippi, for having urinated discreetly last August behind his mother’s car while he was waiting for her, in a public parking.
The boy would have received a suspended sentence of three months, where he will have to meet monthly with a probation officer, as well as a two-page reading assignment to be handed in on the basketball player Kobe Bryant, who died in 2020, according to the British media.
“We are not going to appeal. He won’t have a criminal record, it’s a probation period. And he’s a Kobe Bryant fan, so he doesn’t mind writing this two-page report. But the principle still remains: he should have nothing to do,” insisted his lawyer.
But for his mother LaTonya Eason, it is clear that her boy was mistreated by the system during the legal process.
“My son has been through enough being arrested, and then having to see a probation officer and then write an essay, I don’t think it’s fair or equitable,” she told NBC News on Wednesday. .
Within a week of the controversial incident, the officer behind the decision to arrest him and bring him to the police station was fired, the Senatobia Police Department announced.
“The police officers’ decisions violated our written policy and went against our prior training on how to handle these situations (…) We will also have mandatory training for (interventions with) young people throughout the department, like every year,” the police force said, according to CNN.
