WASHINGTON — In the wake of a string of abuses by New York police officers in the 1990s, Loretta E. Lynch, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, spoke forcefully about “the pain of a broken trust” that African-Americans felt and said the responsibility for repairing generations of miscommunication and mistrust fell to law enforcement.

“Frankly, the onus is on law enforcement because we are the ones who have taken the oath to protect and to serve the people of this city,” Ms. Lynch said in 2000. “And we are the ones who have the ability to change from within.”

Ms. Lynch, a career prosecutor, is now awaiting a hearing on her nomination to be the next attorney general. Her remarks, made in two speeches during her first term as United States attorney during the Clinton administration, received little attention at the time. Today, however, the transcripts of those speeches offer insight into Ms. Lynch’s thinking about an issue that will immediately occupy her attention if she is confirmed as the first black woman to serve as attorney general.

Ms. Lynch’s highest-profile case involved charges against members of the New York Police Department for the 1997 attack in which a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, was beaten and sodomized with a broom handle. The case became a national symbol of police brutality.