Hillary Clinton Speaks Out on Ferguson

"We don't want to see our streets look like a war zone. Not in America. We are better than that," Hillary Clinton told a tech conference in San Francisco yesterday in her first public remarks on events in Ferguson, Mo. Clinton praised "decent and respectful law enforcement officers, who showed what quality law enforcement looked like," the Hill reports, but she also called for a thorough investigation of the shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown and for reforms to the justice system, saying, "We can't ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality."

Clinton—who noted that she was speaking on the 51st anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech— said that as a mother, her heart broke for the Brown family and that she also grieves "for that community and for many like it across our country." Clinton, who has yet to say whether she plans to run for president in 2016, had been criticized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and others for not addressing events in Ferguson earlier and declined to answer questions about the subject at a book signing last weekend, the New York Times reports. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)