A young boy in Mississippi was given three months probation and was required to write an essay about deceased basketball player Kobe Bryant after he was arrested for public urination over the summer. The arrest stirred up a lot of controversy within the Senatobia police department, and an officer lost his job after detaining the child.
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The boy, who was 10 at the time, went behind his mother's car to urinate while she was inside of an attorney's office, the mother, Latonya Eason, told Mississippi's FOX13. According to Eason, the first officer who saw her son was going to let him off with a warning, but a lieutenant "made a scene" and the boy was placed in the back of a cop car.
"I think it's ridiculous," a Senatobia resident told the news outlet earlier this week. "I have two boys and that’s how I potty-trained them."
Another mother in Senatobia told the outlet that she feels the police aren't focusing on important issues. "I think we should be focusing on things that are more important," Patricia Mitchell said. "There's bigger issues to be concerned about than a 10-year-old urinating in public."
"He did not expose himself," the boy's legal representative, Carlos Moore, told the outlet. "There was no public restroom available and he went to the bathroom behind a car. Discreetly."
Previously, the boy told the news outlet that he had been held in a jail cell. Eventually, he was charged with child in need of services and then released to his mother.
Immediately after the boy's arrest, Senatobia Police Chief Richard Chandler said that one of the police officers had lost his job as a result of the arrest, and several others would be facing disciplinary actions.
"It was an error in judgment for us to transport the child to the police station since the mother was present at the time as a reasonable alternative," Chief Chandler said. "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."
