Greenport teen reports racial profiling incident

Faith Welch, a junior at Greenport High School, and her boyfriend Jon Luc Jobson were in an Uber three weeks ago headed to the Strawberry Festival in Mattituck when a Southold police officer pulled their car over. It wasn’t for anything the driver did, but instead what someone alleged Faith and Jon Luc, two Black teenagers, had been up to in the King Kullen parking lot.

“We weren’t walking around, we weren’t bothering anyone,” Faith said as she detailed the incident at a June 26 Southold Town and Greenport Village joint meeting. “We were standing on the curb doing what anyone who scheduled an Uber would be doing: waiting.” 

Southold Police Chief Grattan said the caller had reported the two were acting suspicious, looking into cars, asking people for money and were in and out of stores.

The police officer who pulled their Uber over took Faith and her boyfriend’s IDs, ran some scans and returned with another officer. The two were kind and apologetic, Faith said, “unlike how we were primarily approached.” The officers apologized and acknowledged “how bad this looked.” 

“The officer who made the initial stop realized relatively quickly that this was some sort of misunderstanding,” Chief Grattan said in a July 1 phone interview with The Suffolk Times.

Faith’s mother called the police department later that day, and one of the officers said they checked in with the original caller whose story changed from, “’We were going into cars’ to that ‘we just looked suspicious.’” 

“Let me be clear: That’s racial profiling,” Faith said. “This could have ended very differently, and for many young Black and brown people across this country, and even in our own county, it has. I am grateful that in our case, it ended with an apology and not something worse. But the fear, the anger and the message it sends doesn’t just disappear.”

The incident is emblematic of a broader issue of perception, Faith said, “where young people of color are automatically seen as a threat even when doing the most normal things.” She urged the Town Board, who serve as police commissioners for Southold Police, and all community members to take racial profiling seriously and ensure that false or biased 911 calls are not treated as unquestioned facts. 

“Stop letting things slide because you know their family, which is a common excuse used in our town and other small communities like ours,” Faith said. “Because while an apology from an officer is appreciated, it’s not enough. The people who make these calls should be held responsible  —just like anyone else who files a false police report.”

Councilman Brian Mealy, Town Board liaison to the Anti-Bias Task Force, responded to Faith’s story as a fellow person of color who has been pulled over by local police himself. He related to her experience and fear in that moment, recalling through tears what his father told him to survive the situation. 

“I’m just glad that you survived, and I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said, his voice choked up by emotion. 

Mr. Mealy said the task force met with Chief Grattan to discuss the incident and noted that the “task force was very very upset to hear what had happened to” Faith. In that meeting, Mr. Mealy said, the task force “grilled” the chief about traffic stop procedures, what kind of call generates a stop and how police handle general safety reports. 

“I did ask Chief Grattan to investigate the caller to see if this has happened before,” Mr. Mealy said. “Everybody is entitled to say that something is a safety risk, but the way the person allegedly went about it was not the correct way. And I just want to soundly reject that in our community. We don’t do that.”

Chief Grattan said no investigations were launched regarding the incident but that he had listened to the recorded 911 calls, read the reports and interviewed the officers involved.

“It was unfortunate that [Faith] had to experience this, but I do believe that our officers did a good job and handled the call properly,” he said.

Chief Grattan said all police officers in Southold participate in annual racial profile training and attend implicit and explicit bias training online through the PoliceOne Academy training program.

“I don’t expect racism to disappear overnight, but I do expect people who are emboldened to be openly racist to face real consequences and for this behavior to not be tolerated in our community,” Faith said. “It’s exhausting to feel like your skin color makes you guilty until proven innocent.”

She added that her recounting of the incident was not about anger, but about justice.

“It’s about making sure that the next young person who stands outside of a grocery story doesn’t get criminalized for simply existing,” Faith said.

Mr. Mealy encouraged Faith and other young people in the community to keep living their lives and telling adults who can affect things what’s going on. “Because if we don’t know, we can’t change it,” he said.