After Tuesday’s youth court hearing in Tate County, I think we can all agree that you can blame the whole affair on childishness.
Ironically, the actual child at the center of the whole thing is not the person we are talking about here.
That child, 10-year-old Quantavious Eason, was arrested, put in the backseat of a Senatobia Police Department cruiser and taken to the police department on a charge of public urination back in August.
Eason, who is Black, relieved himself in a parking lot, behind the open car door of his mom’s car so as not to expose himself to others. In a stroke of bad luck, one of the SPD’s soon-to-be-former-finest observed the crime. His mom had left the boy in the car in the parking lot of the attorney she was meeting with when nature called. Eason’s options did not include access to a restroom.
I claim no insight into how females respond in these situations, but I can say with a high degree of confidence that on that August day, Evans did what every male child ever born has done at one point or another, probably more than once.
When I was 8 years old, I faced that same dilemma halfway through a Little League baseball game. As I took my place in right field somewhere in the middle innings, the urge of nature suddenly became more than I could resist. I had two choices: pee my uniform pants or seek some private place to relieve my bladder. The first option was no option at all, so I edged my way closer and closer to the right-field foul line, hoping no one would notice when I made a break from the field to a stand of small trees just beyond the fence.
I suppose I could have trotted in from my position and taken myself out of the game and let another kid take over right field. But that would have been embarrassing. I felt the odds would be good that nobody would notice my absence for a couple of minutes on the theory that, in the entire 100-year-plus history of 8-year-old Little League baseball, there has been only two or three recorded instances where a ball was ever hit into right field.
So off the field I scooted, returning only to find that, yes, my absence had been noticed and another kid was playing right field.
Until August, when Quantavious Eason was actually arrested for this, the worst thing that could happen to a boy in this circumstance was a little embarrassment. So, as you might imagine, when mom returned from her meeting to find her child in the back seat of a police cruiser and told she could pick him up at the station, all hell was fixin’ to break loose, as the saying goes.
The mom, LaTonya Eason, hired an attorney to hold the police accountable for what they had done. That it was a white cop who arrested a Black child for such a frivolous offense introduced a racial element to the incident. The arrest attracted the attention of local and national media and a quick internal investigation by a thoroughly-chastened police department led to the termination of the arresting officer.
That might have been – should have been – the end of the story as far as the criminal implications for the kid were concerned. You would think somebody in the court system in Tate County would know a lead balloon when they saw one.
But, no. Instead of dropping the matter, the kid’s case carried on through the Youth Court system.
On Tuesday, the Youth Court judge sentenced Eason to three months probation and an order to write a two–page essay on NBA legend Kobe Bryant.
Trying to climb into the minds of those in the Tate County justice system is a strange place to go, given what this outcome suggests. But I’m going to guess the judge thought sentencing a Black kid to a book report on a famous Black athlete, along with three months probation, was supposed to be a cute, happy ending. The kid’s case was non-adjudicated, meaning that as long as he fulfills the unspecified terms on probation, no conviction will go on his record. It might be interpreted as the court saying “no harm, no foul.”
But I see it as a judicial system that is too proud, too arrogant – and perhaps even too racist – to admit an error and make a sincere apology.
It’s like Tate County was determined to have the last word.
And as far as I’m concerned that word is “childish.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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