(HorizonPost.com) – The Mississippi police officer who earlier this month arrested a 10-year-old boy for public urination is out of a job, the Washington Post reported.
Last week, Fox 13 in Memphis reported that the boy was arrested and taken into custody by a Senatobia Police officer on August 10 after he urinated in a parking lot.
The boy’s mother, Latonya Eason told Fox 13 that she had stopped at an attorney’s office while her son, Quantavious, waited in the car outside. When she returned to the parking lot, she saw a police officer with her son. the officer informed Eason that he caught her son urinating behind her car.
According to the mother, the officer was going to let Quantavious go with a warning. But when other officers showed up at the scene, he decided to take her son into custody where he was cited as a child in need of supervision and subsequently released.
In a statement to Fox 13, Senatobia Police Chief Richard Chandler said the Youth Court Act allows an officer to file a referral against children as young as seven if they are “in need of supervision.”
Chief Chandler noted that the boy was not handcuffed but conceded that it was an error in judgment to transport him to the police station since his mother was present “as a reasonable alternative.”
But after a media frenzy over the incident, fueled in large part by Quantavious being black, Chief Chandler said in a statement on Monday that the officer in question was no longer with the Senatobia Police Department and the other officers involved in the August 10 incident will face disciplinary action.
Chief Chandler did not say if the officer voluntarily resigned or was fired.
In his statement, Chandler explained that the officer violated the department’s policy when he decided to take Quantavious into custody and failed to follow department training in dealing with situations like this.
According to the Associated Press, it is not clear if the citation issued to Quantavious on August 10 was rescinded.
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