Quanell X is not known for taking a volatile situation and dialing it back but when Freeport balanced on a razor edge after a young black male was shot dead by police inside a dark apartment, that is exactly what he did. He did it with the help of an unlikely ally.
"It was about to boil over. I was receiving text messages from those on the scene saying we are about to riot," the activist said.
There were rumors running wild in minutes near the scene of the shooting leaving residents and police on edge in minutes.
"People want a story and they are going to fill the gaps in if they don't have it," said Chief Daniel Pennington of the Freeport Police.
Community Activist Quanell X raced to Freeport and he was ready for a fight. A riot like too many we have seen all over the country.
"My mind was this is enough of this. I am sick and tired of these brothers being killed. We need to stand up and fight them the way they fight us by any means necessary. That was my attitude. That was the right crowd for it," Quanell X said, but this would be different.
Pennington immediately knew the potential for trouble.
"Where we can put the truth out some people won't heed that. Won't recognize that. But coming from a source like him it is acted upon," he said.
Pennington had never met Quanell X and only knew him by reputation.
It turns out the two men surprised each other.
"To be that open? That quick? I kinda felt, this is strange. This is different," Quanell X remembered.
Pennington knew it was different, "It does seem a foreign concept just off the top of it."
The tense situation chilled with two key decisions from Pennington, choosing to let Quanell X examine the shooting scene after the crime scene was cleared, and meeting with Quanell X, the man who was shot's mother and girlfriend.
The meeting held for one main reason,
"Truth does not do you a whole lot of good if people are not willing to listen to it and that is why he was so vital in this deal," Pennington said.
Within minutes of the end of that meeting, Quanell X then met with the protesters still gathering at the Police station and told those gathered what he now believed.
All of that in four hours after the shooting ending with no riots, just quiet in Freeport. However, one thing remains.
"It is a tragedy. There is no way around it. Their lives have been changed forever and the officer's life is changed forever," Pennington reminds everyone.
Twenty-four hours after that shooting there could have just as easily been hundreds if not thousands of people on the front steps of the Freeport Police Department.
Instead only one person came by and he was not there to protest.
"I am sorry for my behavior yesterday. I was not like me to conduct myself like that," an apology from Clarence Johnican, who is the uncle of the man police shot Ron "Maynard" Sneed.
Despite his grief, in the end with the cooperation of Quanell X and the chief he changed,
"All I wanted was just the truth. Whether it was my nephews fault or the police fault I just wanted the truth to come out."
Freeport and Ferguson, Mo. have at least two things in common.
One, a police shooting, "All the key ingredients were there. One mixed on way one mixed the other," said Pennington.
Quanell X has a stronger take, "Had you taken that same police chief's conduct and handling of the Freeport shooting, take that same chief into Ferguson and it never would have happened."
The names of both towns start with "F," but that is where the similarity ends.
