Black Mississippi boy, 10, is arrested and carted to jail after cops caught him peeing behind his mother’s car while she visited lawyer’s office

A 10-year-old African-American child was moved to tears last week after he was arrested and dragged to jail for urinating behind his mother’s car.

Police in Senatobia, a Mississippi town just south of Memphis, have since apologized for the incident. The local sheriff is now calling the arresting officer’s actions an “error of judgement.”

Meanwhile, the child’s mother, Latonya Eason, expresses her outrage and tells local media how the August 10 arrest could have easily been avoided, and that the responding officer went overboard by taking son Quantavious to jail.

She says she visited her attorney’s office when her son committed the public sex offense — which usually just warrants a ticket — and was inside when the unnamed cop came in to tell her what her son had done.

Speaking to several local outlets this week, she revealed that the officer was initially going to let the child go with a warning, but changed his mind when other officers arrived on the scene. One of them, a lieutenant, demanded that police take him in, she said — to be beaten with a statute stemming from leaving him unattended.

Scroll down for video:

Eason spoke about the incident this week to Fox 13 Memphisrecalling how within ten minutes of walking into her lawyer’s office for legal advice, the first officer on the scene interrupted the meeting to tell her what her son had done.

“I was like, ‘Son, why did you do that?'” she recalled, after being taken to the parking lot of the 216 S Ward Street facility where her son had been waiting.

She told the outlet how her son, who was yet to be arrested at the time, explained how he decided to relieve himself after his sister – who was also in the car – told her the legal office had no bathroom.

“He said, ‘Mom, my sister said they don’t have a bathroom in there,'” Eason told the outlet, adding that at the time she intended to punish the child herself.

“I was like, ‘You knew better, you should have come and asked me if they had a toilet,'” she recalls.

She said the then-single officer seemed to be on the same wavelength at first.

“He was like, ‘Since you treated it like a mother, he can just get back in the car,'” she said of what the officer allegedly told her.

She claimed his tune quickly changed as several other officers, including an unnamed superior, arrived on the scene.

Eason told the agency it was at this point that the superior officer, an unnamed lieutenant, said the boy should go to jail so the officer could file a referral against him — both for the delinquent act and for the fact that he was without supervision was left.

The referral saw the child – who was not handcuffed but taken in a police car – hit by a child who needed help, which will get the city’s juvenile court involved to help Eason deal with the youth without incarcerating him, police said.

Still, the lieutenant insisted that Quantavious be brought in and separated from his mother while officers filled out the necessary child protection paperwork — something the city’s police chief Richard Chandler has since ruled as a mistake.

Sent on Monday on behalf of his department, the top agent’s statement read: “We would like to comment on a recent incident involving the arrest of a 10-year-old child.

‘In situations like this, the Juvenile Court gives direction to how officers are allowed to deal with young people during enforcement meetings.

“The Juvenile Court Act allows officers to file a referral against a child as young as 7 years old if it needs supervision (which can also be based on delinquent acts), or 10 years old if it commits acts that would be illegal for an adult under identical circumstances (ie a ‘delinquent’ act),’ he explained.

“The need to transport children from a crime scene depends on several factors and the availability of reasonable alternatives.”

“In this situation,” he said, the unnamed arresting officer “personally witnessed a 10-year-old child publicly commit an act that would have been illegal for an adult under the circumstances.

“The officer did not see a parent on site during initial contact. The mother found herself at a nearby business soon after and was told her child would face juvenile court for this case.

Officers then took the 10-year-old to the police station to complete paperwork where the child was released to the mother. The child was not handcuffed during this incident.’

Chandler — who was named Law Enforcement Officer of the Year in 2021 by First Responders of Mississippi — added, “Under these circumstances, it was an error of judgment for us to transport the child to the police station, given that the mother was present. at that time as a reasonable alternative.’

He admitted, “Mistakes like this remind us in this profession that there is a constant need for training and refresher courses on the various topics we deal with every day.”

The admission of guilt, aside from the fact that Quantavious’s outraged mother was not pleased, seemed to contradict the officer’s statement just before, in which he said police had not seen a parent at the scene.

Quantavius, meanwhile, remains traumatized, tearfully telling the Fox affiliate this week, “I started to cry a little bit. They took me there and got me out of the truck. I didn’t know what was happening.’

“I get scared and start shaking and think I’m going to jail.”

However, his mother is more furious, though she has not yet expressed any plans to file a lawsuit against the department over the disturbing incident.

“No, him urinating in the parking lot was not good, but at the same time I treated it like a parent,” she told the station emotionally.

“And that one cop told my baby to get back in the car like it was okay and the other one to stop him and take him to jail. Like no,” Eason told WHBQ.

“I’m just speechless right now. Why would you arrest a 10-year-old child?’