Clinton offers comfort in N.C.

Candidate says her experience different from many in struggle

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Hillary Clinton pledged to fight for “end-to-end reform” of the criminal justice system as she paid a visit Sunday to a church here to commiserate with a community struggling with the fatal police shooting of a black man that sparked days of unrest.

The Democratic presidential nominee spoke for about 20 minutes at Little Rock A.M.E. Zion Church, sharing her perspective as a grandmother, she said, but acknowledging that her concerns for her grandchildren are very different from those of African-American grandmothers.

“Our entire country should take a moment to really look at what’s going on here and across America,” Clinton said. “Imagine it through our children’s eyes. It makes my heart ache when kids … are going through this and trying to make sense of the absolutely senseless.”

Clinton delivered the last several minutes of her remarks with her arm around a 9-year-old girl she had invited to the pulpit. The girl recently addressed the Charlotte City Council about police violence and the experience of seeing African-American parents being prematurely buried.

Clinton noted that not all of the facts are known about the death of Keith Lamont Scott at the hands of police about two weeks ago. But, she said, Scott’s family and “this community is in pain. ... We pray for them, and we pray for all families that have suffered similar losses.”

“Too many African-American families have been in the same tragic situation that the Scott family has found themselves,” Clinton said.

Videos released by police — one taken from an officer’s body camera and another from the dashboard camera of a police vehicle — showed Scott exiting his vehicle and falling to the ground. But they did not answer a crucial question: whether Scott was holding a gun, as police have said and his family has denied.

Clinton listed several initiatives she has pushed as a presidential candidate, including training police to “de-escalate” potentially violent situations, enacting additional gun-control measures and investing more heavily in education and jobs.

She made no mention of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, during her remarks but decried the approach of those who say problems such as those in Charlotte can be solved “simply by more law and order” — referencing words Trump has used on the campaign trail.