Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop met last night with city religious leaders at the Mary McLeod Bethune Life Center for a dialogue on recent shootings.

"It was an honest conversation about a two-way street, that problems and solutions can't necessarily come from the outside in, they have to come from the inside out," said Fulop after the hour-long meeting.

Fulop said the meeting with police officials and about 50 members of the clergy was a constructive dialogue and that everyone's short-term goal is to dial back the temperature, because that is not productive.

"They had some concerns and feedback based on how some people perceive the police, some of it warranted and some of it unwarranted. We collectively need to understand that you are not going to correct decades and decades of sentiment in one month or one year and that's fine," Fulop said. "They told us what we need to do better and we go from there."

Fulop said his administration and the police department will make some changes and another meeting with the clergy will be held in one week.

Jersey City NAACP President William Braker said the meeting was informative and instructive and people felt free to speak their minds about police and community relations.

But Braker said, "At the end of the day what is needed is community-based policing. We need more police foot patrols. A police department should be part of the community, not apart from the community. That is the very definition of community-based policing.

The Rev. John H. McReynolds of Mt. Olive Baptist Church on Arlington Avenue said after the meeting that "The mayor wants to do something for the city and I'm behind him all the way."

As Jersey City Assemblyman Charles Mainor left the meeting he said the message was, "We need everyone to be a part of the solution."

Former Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson also attended the meeting, which was closed to the news media and to the general public.

"I'm just so saddened by all of the shooting and the senseless deaths" Richardson said. "We can't stop the drug dealing from going on but there has to be some rules to the game. You just don't shoot innocent people. Even the Mafia had rules to the game. I'm going to do everything I can because I want us to live in peace."